Microdot Games

I had the idea for Roll A Coaster Park ages ago, after rediscovering the joy of playing Rollercoaster Tycoon, and enjoying the sandbox nature of it, allowing some cosy building and park management while theoretically advancing towards your goal.

And there it stood, sketched out in my design notebook gathering dust while a myriad of other more immediately appealing ideas were prioritised. And maybe even forgotten.

Then I heard about the Decision Space game jam, and it’s restrictions are almost a perfect fit for what I had in mind for the game. And out pops my sketch and a few iterations forward and we have something workable for the jam.

So why the sudden motivation? A few things happened:

– A Deadline. Now there’s a clear window of time where I can work to get something finished in order to participate

– A Community. Although I’m not much of a regular in the Discord channel where the jam is organised, it’s nice to be able to check out what ideas others are working on, and feel like we’re sort of working in parallel on a shared project.

– Feedback. In getting the game ready in time, I needed to get it out into the open, and play it a few times with others. The little bit of positive feedback from an early sketch can be great motivation to continue development.

The game jam is ongoing as I write this, and I have about 15 other designs to try out, which is quite exciting (the ones I’ve tried so far have been great!) In a few weeks all the feedback will be in and there might be some judging by the organisers, but regardless of the “result” I’m excited to have had the spark of motivation to get this idea out. I get to see just how far I can take my little roller coaster game, and start a little game company to do so.

If you’ve read this far well done! Hopefully it inspires you to get started on a project of your own. Let me know if it does!