Develop!

     Alright, so it's vary rare that I am to do a post that's this personal, but I thought you would all be interested (I'm probably wrong). As many of you know, or at least should know by now, I am an avid gamer. I love video games, they're such an amazing medium with literally endless possibilities. People have been saying stuff like "one day, movies in the theater will be interactive" for years, but I think it's already here, and it has been for a while. Video games allow someone to enter a story and interact in their own way while still getting the story! That's awesome!

     So other than that, why am I telling you this? Well, here's why. When it comes to thinking about careers, I've always been a little bit... meh. I only had a general idea of what I wanted to do. I enjoy creating things like stories, art, music, all that stuff. But it hit me one day, that I could literally make a career out of making one of the things I love the most: video games!

     So currently, that's where I'd like to go, into the gaming industry. Be it design, coding, whatever! That's where I'd like to be. But this isn't some sappy "look at my life" journal entry here, this is actually a project. I'd like to develop a game sometime very soon. Something very simple, but still very cool. 

     So I have entered the stages of game design. I do not know how long it will take me, I just know that it will take me a while (what am I even saying). Now, I don't know much about game design, but I can tell you this: I'm pretty sure the first stage is conceptualization. And, as an added bonus, I already know what I'm going to make. It's a little something called Twixt.

      No, not the Francis Ford Coppola horror flick that came out last year, the board game! ...still not ringing any bells? Alright, I'll explain. My family has been in possession of Twixt since before I was born. It's an old board game with a simply goal: build a wall to the other side of the board before your opponent. Sounds easy, right? Well, Twixt is actually incredibly deep, and the strategy that goes into it is really amazing, once you see it. Let me show you what it's like.

     That is the Twixt board, a large grid of dots, kinda like that game where you try to make as many squares as possible (I don't know if it has a name). Each player has pegs and bridges that they place down on the board when it's their turn. You start anywhere on the board. On your turn, you place down a peg, if you can connect it to another peg, then you place a bridge down between them. The first one to link their colored line to the other via bridge wins. Now, take a look at what gameplay is like.

     As you can see, you can't connect pegs just up/down and left/right. The bridges are too long. You have to go diagonally to connect the bridges, so it isn't a straight shot game. It's really really deep and really fun.

     I don't know how long it will take me to develop this, and I don't know what my level of success will be, but I do promise you that I will do it. So I guess ChuckBlog is currently doubling as a dev blog for Twixt. Or, I guess it'll need a new name... I dunno, Twixt2? Trixt? Charles's Twixt.

     I dunno.