At the beginning of this month we officially started working on my dream video game – Garrison. As crazy as this sounds, I’ve been working towards this moment for over 20 years.
It’s an incredibly long story that I’ll do my best to summarise for you in a few brief paragraphs.
How it started
When I was a kid, I loved reading. I still do, though it’s harder to make time for it these days. We all know the drill – being an adult is exhausting.
I loved books about heroes and dragons and adventures, so when my dad gave me his old copy of The Hobbit I was mesmerised. I must’ve read it 2 or 3 times back to back before learning there were other books in that same world.
After consuming those, whenever I’d go to sleep I’d start imagining my own stories with my own heroes. Then, growing up and learning more about the histories of different nations, I’d start to imagine wars and betrayals. I was creating my own world.
It should seem natural, then, that I gravitated towards a career in writing. My plan had always been to write a series of novels (which I may still do, one day) but each time I’d try, the motivation just wasn’t there. I’d write a few pages or half a chapter at best.
Then I had my eureka moment.
Creating a video game would give me a place to get everything out of my head and work as the perfect medium to share my stories. More than that, I’d lived with these ideas in my head for so long that I had wanted to see them. Words alone weren’t enough.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was to start writing down how I’d want the game to work. The irony is not lost on me.
Where we are now
After 3 or 4 years of writing things down, scrapping them and starting over, I eventually had a very long game design document that I felt comfortable sharing with other people. So, a few months into 2025, that’s exactly what I did.
What followed is like a hazy drunken memory, to be honest. This is the first time I’ve actually sat down and reflected on how the development of Garrison has been going.
First and foremost, I feel very lucky to have found a group of experienced and massively talented people that are excited to work on this game with me.
We’re still at the very beginning of what I’m sure will be an incredibly long journey but I couldn’t be happier about my choice of travel companions.
We had two primary goals for August:
- A minimal viable product (MVP) and
- Start refining art style
Both are incredibly important so we can get a feel for the game. The last thing we want is to commit to months of development only to find out the game sucks or it looks terrible.
I’m happy to report that it, in fact, does not suck. We haven’t figured out exactly how we want the game to look yet… but we’re close.
What’s next
There are a lot of different features that exist to make Garrison compelling and challenging, so the development roadmap is pretty clear – add them in, one at a time.
We’re working on rebuilding the MVP to fully recreate the core gameplay loop – this’ll give us a much greater idea of what the game will actually be.
Landing on the right art style for this game is going to be key. You play as a fastidious Garrison commander with an array of journals keeping track of everything that happens under their watch.
We’re trying to find a style that feels at home on both a fantasy journal page and a mobile phone screen. I say we, obviously I mean it in the royal sense – all I do is draw things like this in MS paint:
Help or hindrance? We’ll find out together!
Community Q & A
There’s so much that I want to say about Garrison and the development process that it’s verging on being overwhelming. I thought a good way of approaching this would be to reserve a spot at the end of each devblog to answer a question or two from the community.
The inaugural question goes to a relatively new but valued friend who gave me a much needed reality check in regards to how much work this process was going to be.
Without that conversation I doubt I would’ve made it this far so, for that, I am incredibly grateful! Amy is the real MVP (that’s an inside joke). When we met up a few weeks ago for her birthday, she asked:
“So! How’s it going with your game?”
Boy oh boy, did I have a lot to say. After riffing about how much I was enjoying myself, I went on to explain the very simple reason why: the team.
One of the things I was most looking forward to was working with other creatives to make this game project something better than I ever could’ve done on my own – and that’s exactly what’s been happening.
I remember in an early conversation with Sophie (artist) I’d said that I wasn’t sure how to integrate the imagery we’d planned on creating into the UI. Immediately she had an idea – we put the player in the middle of the Garrison and have the game work as if they’re looking around. I couldn’t stop smiling! It was the perfect solution.
Then a couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Leon (developer) and he started talking about the mechanics of the game and how he’s going to anticipate some future headaches by doing… something? He was talking about… multi-threading. I never did google that but it doesn’t matter – the point is that he’s solving problems I didn’t even know existed.
I couldn’t be more grateful for them both.
I’ve set up a discord channel where you can discuss each month’s dev blog (and ask questions for future dev blogs) – check it out here. There’s also a newsletter you can subscribe to so you won’t miss any game updates.
See you next month!
Cheers, Andrew