Hi. I'm Mog. Real name's Daniel.
I used to be addicted to video games for probably almost 20 years. Turns out, I used it as an emotional escape in combination of my hyperfocus to block out anything negative in my early life (and there was a lot of it to run away from). Now that I'm a fully-functioning adult, I realize that I can address bad stuff appropriately and life isn't so hard and blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, in the middle of all of that, in highschool, I discovered that I could actually *make* games instead of just playing them. Made a video game design team in our school, entered a local contest, got a secondary trophy for "Best Designed Game" (which basically meant that it was the most fun of games that didn't get ranked in the top 3). So that was cool.
Next year, we entered a new contest, we had some inner-team drama (due to two people no longer dating), and I wasn't getting the hang of the game we were making (we went for a sim-city game that used a lot of math instead of a top-down shooter, and I was basically the lead for both games), so it really stunk.
Between that and...well, life after 18, I basically gave up the idea of ever making games again.
But now that I'm 30, I've found that I still love game design.
I love the fact that Supergiant Games' Hades has a background music mechanic that adjusts the music based on how difficult the fight is, how much damage you've taken, and whether or not you killed the boss near the end of a music segment (which then adjusts the next phrase of the music to be the conclusion piece of the area). This is different than their other game, Transistor, which had two different tracks for each combat zone to swap from whether you were in active combat vs. while the game is paused during Turn(). Freaking brilliant.
And I love the fact that every single game made by Days of Wonder has each of your actions influence the actions of other players, as well as tying resources to permissions of play and have the number of resources change as you play (essentially creating a loop where the game becomes more and more difficult the longer you play while also causing early-game maneuvers to have a lot of later impact).
I finally realized that I think I have a knack for this kinda thing, because most normal people think I'm just nuts whenever I talk about it. The fact that I'm not like them is... encouraging, I think. Maybe I *am* different enough to make it. So I'm taking the next step.
I have two games in mind that I've been working on for months, and I can't wait to play them. Making them is fun, but I'm really just looking forward to playing these games as a player, knowing that I made them be as fun as I can make them.
I also make some homebrew content for DnD, and I regularly post in the Giant in the Playground 5e forum and the RPG Stack Exchange under the same name (Man_Over_Game).
Anyway, that's me. Really looking forward to work with you all, and I'm really happy to be here!
I might have to pick your brain later, then.
One of the two games I'm designing is a Robot vs. Robot boxing game, where players play cards in a row as fast as possible and try to counter each-other's plays.
The interesting part is that the game's rounds last only 1 minute apiece, tracked by a timer that comes with the game.
The other interesting part is that the sequence is read at the end of each round like a programming queue, from start to finish, so the 3rd card I played is compared against the 3rd card you played, regardless of what time we played those cards.
And we're talking robots, so you can place cards (functions) on top of other cards you already played to change your strategy.
And we're talking boxing, so you can disrupt your opponent's strategy by hitting them, which deletes the topmost card that's next in their sequence (which might ruin their planned combo).
It's on the backburner right now, as I'm kinda devoting my time to my first game, but I will definitely be bugging you about it once my schedule's clear!