Devlog: The Annoying Apple, Week #3-4

Another episode of my devlog, where I talk about my adventure in trying to develop a little game with my game designer Max (if you missed last episode, you can find it here). Today is like the last episode, I’ll tell you why.

Max has come to my office and has tried by himself the prototype games about colors we’ve made and… well, was pretty disappointed. He couldn’t think about how to transform those prototypes in interesting games. All ideas that came to his mind employing color mechanics were all too simple (and so of no interest for players) or too complicated (and so not affordable for us, that are just 2 people making a zero-budget game). That’s sad.

We thought about other possible games not employing color as main mechanic and all ideas were again too simple or too complicated. There were some affordable ideas, but they were about some shooting games and while I’m a huge fan of shooters (like Robo Recall), I think that nowadays in VR stores we have mainly only shooters and horror games and I’m quite bored at the idea of making another one of them.

We ended up with a crazy idea: making a game about motion sickness. So, instead of making a game without motion sickness as everyone is doing… making a game with a lot of motion sickness. Something like a vomit challenge! Of course it was more a provocation than a true game… but the idea was so crazy that we both liked it a lot.

So I found myself prototyping a game that should provoke dizziness and nausea, taking all the advices about how to avoid motion sickness and doing exactly the contrary of everything. The result? The game was awful, did not create enough in-game sickness to foster a challenge between players and I did end up having my head and stomach spinning a lot after the game. Because yes, in-game I had no nausea, but after the game I was really sick. So crazy in doing this test!

In the end, all our ideas are like dead. The Annoying Apple will never see the light. It’s hard talking about failures, but sometimes is necessary, like when I talked about my failed VR startup. But we don’t give up… we still look for a great idea…

The takeaway of these two weeks? Well, first of all that even ideas that appear cool can be awful when tried in practice. Then, never surrender… finding a cool and affordable idea isn’t easy. You have to continue trying and failing. Mostly failing. We still continue looking for that. Stay tuned!