After putting in about 5 hours of solid work in game mechanics alone, after countless revisions of card art in rough sketch form and after almost 30 pages of ideas and rough outs. . . I lost my game. Magical Muddle is now laying somewhere on a rural highway in MA.
Yup. We were out looking at some property and after the showing I put my notebook on the roof of the car to strap my daughter into her seat. That's the last I ever saw of the damned thing.
Fortunately for me a lot of the notes were build up to the current system, which is stored in my head. As long as i don't lose that I can remake the game's general rules and most recent card design in about 3-4 hours.
So, now that I've laid my cards on the table (haw haw) what's the dumbest or silliest thing you've ever done in game design?
Ben
You have my deepest sympathy - I know what it's like!
While I have dozens of notebooks filled with various sketches and notes, I try to get them typed into the computer within a few days. And then I regularly back them up to CD or my USB drive "just in case" anything happens to the computer. I'm extra anal retentive about stuff like this after having a similar experiece of losing a prototype!
Best of luck bouncing back. Hopefully the game concept is still fresh enough in your mind that you can salvage most of your ideas.