The cards for the game I invented arrived!

I should explain…

When I first became a writer for the video game team Soltorch Games, I felt out of my league. Someone recommended to me “Slay the Dragon” (by Robert Denton Bryant), a book about writing for video games.

One of the exercises the book suggests is creating a (simple) board game, to learn about how game mechanics work.

I decided to go with a card game instead, and… well… I turned a simple exercise into a chance to stretch myself creatively.

It couldn’t take that long to invent a card game, right?

After several months of play-testing with family, adjusting the mechanics, designing and re-designing the cards in Canva, I ordered my deck through Make Playing Cards. And they look amazing! “The Bug Zoo Game” now feels like an official card game!

So… what did I learn about making video games through this exercise?

Well, honestly… I guess I learned that, if you want to write for a video game, you should probably spend more time writing, and less time turning a simple exercise into a months-long project.

But it was lots of fun!

I’m not sure I’ll be creating another card game anytime soon, though I’m glad I gave this one a try. Between this project and the designs I’ve been doing lately, maybe I haven’t been spending as much time on writing as I could. But I think I needed the break, to try something new.