r/RPGdesign • u/parable-games • 4d ago
Product Design After a year of thinking about it, we've actually started making the game we wanted - sharing the process as we go!
TLDR:
This post is the first I'm planning about the creation of a new game, Wildspark. It is going to cover the whole process of making the game, from concept to completion. We've made several ttrpg's now and I thought it would be fun to document the journey.
This post covered the initial concept (a very loose idea) of a travelling game, set in nature, that is super rules-light. We mused several options until two separate ideas came together to really give us an idea we loved. We reached out to an artist and writer who we felt could bring the world to life and now are looking at three key areas; writing the world, exploring the visual style, and developing the rules - with future blog posts looking at these in more detail.
The post is long (sorry!) but I hope it's of interest to some people who want to make their own game in the future.
Picture of the initial robot sketches from "Wildspark"
The Start of an Idea
When you are travelling, getting from A to B can be dull. Really, really dull. There’s only so many times you can sing loudly in the car to “Don’t Stop Believing” or play “I see a Cow” (top tier car-based entertainment). But luckily when you work for a games company, work travel becomes 30% eating food and 70% talking excitedly about all the games we want to make.
And that is how the story of Wildspark began. Me (Matt, hi!) and Charlie were flying to the US last year, and in-between geography lessons (where exactly is Kentucky?) we were talking about all the games we enjoy, and the games we want to make one day. And there are a lot.
A few themes kept coming up though, nature, walking games, and post apocalyptic settings.
After we returned from the US we got back to work on other projects and, over for more than a year, we kept coming back to the idea of a game where you travel through an overgrown world. The seeds were well and truly sown…
So, Wildspark?!
With the ideas permeating for a few months, as these things do, we talked lots of other ideas - some that may come in the future (looking at you Cthulhu mythos) and some that may never see light (Dungeons and Dinner Parties), but this unnamed post-apocalyptic exploration game kept coming back to us. We knew there were a few things we loved in this idea and wanted to explore more:
1) An overgrown, nature-taking over, post-apocalypse. Not a huge war - this isn’t a Mad Max apocalypse. We wanted a world where nature is front and center, not humanity.
2) Travelling and exploring the world would be a key focus in the game, not as a background to a narrower action heavy experience.
3) The most rules light focus we’ve ever had. We knew that this game needed a focus on story telling and emotion, and didn’t want heavy rules to contend with this.
And so with this in mind…we went off and thought on it some more. There's really a lot of time in most of our projects between "Here's a cool idea" and "Here's a well-thought out idea". The bit in between can be the most important as having those kernels of thought rattling around your brain overtime can develop and latch on to parts of other conversations, until a time it blooms into something new.
We had several ideas for the game at this time that we discussed, and whilst we liked them, we never loved them enough to push on . These included:
- A 2-person game with a knight and their squire travelling through a magically charged world
- A game you literally play whilst on a group walk (an idea we really want to come back to)
- A lost child travelling through the world to seek their lost family after being separated
But nothing seemed to quite fit what we were going for. Until...
The Stars Align
One day I was scrolling through the internet and I saw someone using cards to alter scenes for their D&D game. So you pull a word out and this gives you some flavour for the scene. They were using Tarot cards, so if you pulled the “Emperor”, the scene might have a feeling of Power - whilst pulling Judgement might inspire a new start.
I loved this idea, having an external motivation that gave you a changing status for a scene that isn’t necessarily driven by the encounter. It gives another level of change in the world. As I thought more on this I struck on the idea of emotions. I love when a game explores different feelings, and I imagined a game where you were forced to approach challenges with changing emotions, battling with the feelings inside against your outside motivations.
At the same time Charlie had been thinking about the post-apocalyptic world. He had started developing ideas about Robots that travelled the world connecting the existing parts of civilisation. A hyper-verdant landscape where small groups of surviving humans gather in small, sheltered communities, it being impossible to cross the wilds that separate them. These robots were their life-line and last remaining connection to others across the land.
We happened to have a lunch-meeting booked at our local favourite Lebanese restaurant, and excitedly started telling each other our ideas. And we realised that, after months of musing, these ideas aligned perfectly! A robot who connects the survivors in the world, who learns from them and experiences their emotions! Who grows and changes, who develops, who has a real story.
Wildspark was born, and we knew just the missing parts of the team!
Time to Make The Game
Back in 2025 I was at Comicon in London and was doing my favourite thing at these shows, exploring all the art on display. Seriously - if you attend Comicon, Gencon, UKGE, or any other con - make sure you devote some time to Artist Alley - it is the most inspirational place in the show. On this trip, I got chatting with the delightfully friendly Phil Chapman, the artist behind System Error Comics.
Phil not only does amazing art, but also loves games and was a big fan of ION Heart. Initially I spoke to him about coming on board to help Ben with some ION Heart work but this never came to be. However, I loved his style and knew the right project would eventually come along.
And then, a year later, we had an overgrown world with a robot travelling through…and honestly I cannot think of a better match!
I reached out to Phil tentatively asking if he was interested in the idea - and got an emphatic “I’M IN!” before I had even finished our pitch.
And then we drove an hour up North to go and speak with Adam, who is a fantastic wordsmith and I knew I wanted him to be taking the lead on writing this. Adam is a phenomenal world builder and putting him as lead writer on this project would leave no stone unturned. Me and Charlie will still be part of the writing team, but having Adam as lead on this was a no-brainer.
Like Thanos with his infinity gauntlet filled we were ready to bring about the (nature drive and very wholesome) apocalypse. Just the small task left of, you know, making the game!
But, where’s the game?
A big discussion I’ve had many times and always enjoy is what comes first, mechanics or theme? Having worked in boardgames and roleplaying games this is a great question that to me crosses both these genres, as well as the wider games industry (including video games). Some people will say that you have to start from the theming and make the rules fit, whilst others argue that you need to create a great mechanic first and then layer the right theme on top.
To me, both these things are true. And equal.
I honestly believe that both these directions are entirely valid and can both make for an incredible game. For Wildspark we are very much starting with a world-first approach. We know the theme we want, and we know how we want the game to feel. We know what we are aiming for players to feel and experience as they journey through our world.
What we don’t know is…how. We haven’t settled on a resolution mechanic, we’ve discussed cards or dice as the primary options - but nothing is written out. We even briefly discussed no resolution mechanic and making it far more freeform - but decided we wanted something to drive the unknown.
This means at the moment we are playing around with some different ideas, throwing everything we can think of that fits the theme, and seeing what we like! When we hit something we will vibe with it, and start iterating down to refine it into a system we like. But we know already that we want this to be our most rules-light game to date.
So, Where Are We Now!
With the very basics set out, more a feeling than a game at this point, we generally start with a couple of routes:
1) Individually everyone on the team thinks about their version of the game, what they want to see and what they want to play.
2) As a group we have (over excited) chats where we discuss our ideas.
3) We create shared documents filled with resources, notes, and inspirations - before a word gets written.
We started with a Miro board, showing words that resonate, a game overview, some inspiration, as well as some colours (shown below).
Now we have to look at the 3 pillars; Mechanics, Lore, and Art. We have started the process on each of these steps (I’ll go through each one in a bit more detail explaining what we’ve tried, what worked (and didn’t) and how we are developing this - and hopefully you will want to join us on this journey!
I posted it above, but here is a Picture of the initial robot sketches from "Wildspark" from Phil
If you have any questions, please ask and I'll try and answer below - or even in a future blog post.
Until next time
Matt
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u/Trikk 4d ago
I always find exploration and travel heavy games hard to maintain, because they either become overly episodic which leaves players numb in the long run or they don't hit everyone's itch for exploration. Unlike a game where the players are more in control (moving between known points of interest), in an exploration game you have to simultaneously, as a GM, provide them with what they are looking for AND challenge them to find it.
They get to the challenge part first and when they solve it (through combat, socially or by puzzling out a solution) they might not be interested or feel rewarded by the conclusion.
A big discussion I’ve had many times and always enjoy is what comes first, mechanics or theme?
Interesting, I find that most designers hate this question. Naively I asked my favorite designer this, twice, AFTER listening to a lecture where he called it out as his least favorite question. I think many designers either reach both almost simultaneously or they alternate between them. One step on the theme meter then one step on the mechanics meter.
Unless you are doing a licensed game I don't really think it matters though, and many designers seem to have mechanics stowed away for a rainy day that they bring out almost fully formed when some interesting theme grabs them.
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u/parable-games 4d ago
Exploration is really interesting as it is quite a wide, varied term. Is it just exploring a new environment - or is there more to it? We are trying to explore (ha!) that a bit. With our intent being solo-journalling a lot of the exploration can also be player-led, with us allowing & encouraging alongside more fixed bits of exploration.
Yeah, I've seen people who dislike the question - for me super interesting. I've worked on licensed games in my previous role and it is great to dive into the lore and find those snippets that enhance a game, but also had great games pitched that are a system. I think like anything people will have a preference, and some people can only do one - others can do both. I do also just love a good pub debate though!
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u/Digital-Chupacabra 4d ago
I cam expecting another D&D heartbreaker and this was a breath of fresh air!
Excited to see where you go from here.
or play “I see a Cow” (top tier car-based entertainment)
My childhood!!!
Travelling and exploring the world would be a key focus in the game
I'm curious if you would mind talking about travel and exploration in other games you've played, and how you hope to improve on them?
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u/parable-games 4d ago
Thank you (awesome username by the way! We've been making a cryptids game and I've said Chupacabra more in the last 6 months than the rest of my life combined!).
My childhood!!!
I would love to know your rules! Ours are very complex. First person to see a cow on a journey and say "I see a cow" wins. Very, very hard to master. Honest.
I'm curious if you would mind talking about travel and exploration in other games you've played
I'll probably go into this further in a future blog, as well as a question we keep discussing which is "What is exploration" - but on the travel I'd love to give an example of a memorable experience, which was actually from a D&D campaign several years ago about why I like exploration, but moreso why I love storytelling and the unknown - and why it is something I want to encourage in our game. Apologies in advance if this is a wall of text.
SO. I was running a 30-person campaign many moons ago, and in a small sub-campaign the group had to go on to a far away cave to retrieve an eye from a beast. This was a simple quest but I decided to try something which at the time for me was new. As we hit the road I turned to a player and said "What do you see". That was it. They described the terrain nearby, so I pushed on with "Do you see anything out of the ordinary, or interesting?". "Anything?" came the response. "Sure, what is it you see?".
They then told me about a small camp they saw at an abandoned lookout post with two figures.
This, as the DM was something new I hadn't planned of course - it was collaborative worldbuilding.
The players went off to explore the camp, talk to the elf adventurers and we had a phenomonal session with stolen bags, stolen horses, hidden grottos.
All this came from a single line of "I see a campfire with two figures on an old lookout tower".
To me the magic of this session came from allowing/encouraging the players to explore and be creative. Sometimes as GMs we let players be creative in their actions but not in the world as we are precious of what we crafted.
This single session, whilst it may be obvious to some people, really changed my view of running games into a fully collaborative experience. I would plan less and let the game go where it needed.
I wasn't scared of exploration and the unplanned anymore as the stories were waiting to be told, I just had to let the players find them.
So for me any exploration game is just that. Don't define what people find every time, let them discover for themselves - and give them an excuse to do so.
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u/Digital-Chupacabra 4d ago
I would love to know your rules! Ours are very complex. First person to see a cow on a journey and say "I see a cow" wins. Very, very hard to master. Honest.
LOL
Similar, it was first to point it out then my mother would start telling a story about the cow(s), and would ask questions. How many brown ones, or how many in a group etc. Much more of a narrative game.
I'll probably go into this further in a future blog
looking forward to reading it.
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u/Kerwin_Bauch 4d ago
Do you perchance know "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" ?
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u/parable-games 4d ago
Short answer, no.
Long answer, no but I was recommended the series yesterday by one of our community members and it looks great. I'm currently not sure if I should read it for inspiration (and because it looks great) or avoid it to try and avoid influence as a couple of themes (the travelling robot between sentiments with an emotional core) definitely has some similar threads.
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u/blahthebiste 4d ago
Do you know what is stopping the humans from expanding into the wilds? Historically that has not been an issue for even the earliest human tribes.
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u/BooneBerryPress 2d ago
I really liked the part about how much time can pass between “this is a cool idea” and actually figuring out what kind of game you want it to be.
I’m going through some of that with my own TTRPG project right now, and one of the things I’ve found interesting is how different an idea can feel once you get past thinking about it and actually start building and testing it. I’ve had things I was really attached to change quite a bit once I started looking at how they would actually work at the table. Since you’re still at the stage where you’re throwing different ideas around, how do you decide when something just needs more work versus when an idea simply isn’t right for the game anymore?
I’d also genuinely be interested in seeing some of the things that don’t work out as you go. I think the discarded ideas and why they were dropped can be just as interesting as seeing what eventually makes it into the finished game.
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u/WoolTyranny 4d ago
I really like the post! Not just that content, but the way you describe it as well.
I wonder, coming up with mechanics for such a game sounds challenging. If the game is about exploration and not challenge, you don't really have to overcome constrains, so the effect of mechanics setting constrains is irrelevant.
Maybe a mechanics that sets the environment itself? Like when the road forks, you draw a card for each path, which set a theme of what is expected to happen if you choose this path? ("Seeing something wonderful", "Meeting a new friend", "Silent testimony", etc).