Nanotech and Gameplay (The Year Is Unknown)

I have some friendly, but hard, advice.

It doesn't matter how many pages you have in your notebook, if you can't put them into an organized document focusing on the core gameplay elements. This doesn't even tell what type of game you're imagining (3D? 2D? turn based? real time?), but it includes long descriptions of ambitious sub-systems without any technical focus.

Even the most concise and legible design doc will be completely rewritten once you start prototyping gameplay. I think you'd really benefit from some game design courses and an attempt to learn an engine like Unity, because it's clear you're thinking on AAA studio scale, when even an indie version of this concept would require years of work.

Likewise, it's clear that you have a lot of story ideas, but unless you're willing to plot it out and write a script, they're only going to be comprehensible to you. This will be hard to hear, but right now you have nothing that hasn't been dreamed up by thousands of other gamers who don't have the patience to try to make it tangible.

I realize I have an over-complication problem (always,) but in some ways these methods could actually simplify some gameplay elements, at least for me as the creator.

This is a dangerous mindset. Unless you start working hard to become a one-man design team, you will never be the "creator." At most, you will be a co-creator - but even that will require a lot of work on how to communicate ideas, and at least a basic understanding of design theory.

I'm writing because I too used to waste a lot of time writing unfinished game sketches like these. Sharing them in public can be tough on an ambitious art-minded fellow. But you do need to hear what you're doing wrong - because a bit of design learning would help you craft your ideas into a form that isn't fractured and unworkable.

/r/gamedesign Thread