How I escape design ruts

As I mentioned previously, the past couple of months have not been very productive in terms of game design. There’s life reasons for that, but there’s also design-specific reasons, like the fact that I am at points in both of my main projects where significant re-working and/or research is required to start play testing again.

I’ve found that design ruts aren’t that similar to writer’s block. With writer’s block, I am sitting at a blank screen, unclear of what I want to say or how I want to say it. When I’m in a design rut I have plenty of ideas — they’re like background noise in my brain — but translating those ideas into something playable seems so daunting that I put off actually making the prototype indefinitely.

I can rationalize this behavior pretty easily. The time I spend making a whole new set of components is probably not time well spent, because in all likelihood I will play two turns and realize I have to scrap all or most of the cards I just spent my afternoon making.

While this behavior is rational, it does not get games made. The question, then, is how to lower the barrier of prototyping and research so that it doesn’t feel like a monumental effort to significantly rework a game, or read a few books.

In an effort to regain some design momentum, I’ll be using the rest of this article to remind myself what strategies have worked for me in the past. I suspect most of these will apply to any creative endeavor, so I hope you’ll find some value in them as well.

Create a challenge.

In general, deadlines are a very effective motivator for me. I’m able to convince myself I need to hit a deadline even if it’s completely artificial. One time-bounded design challenge that has worked for me in the past is to design a playable game in an hour. This forces me to try something, since I know whatever I try first will likely be a disaster. It puts the iterative process of play testing on steroids. This specific challenge brought you both Sets and Word Swirl. Another longer-term challenge might be to enter a design contest, which puts a hard cap on your design time as well.

Make a demo.

As I mentioned, often I get stuck with a design when I want to completely rework it and create several new components. When I think this way I often forget that I can get a taste of the experience I’m envisioning by creating just enough new things to take a turn or two. Call me a harsh critic, but I can usually tell whether I’m on the right track by playing for just a couple of minutes. And if I’m not, I’ve only wasted a few minutes instead of a few hours.

Schedule a play test.

This tactic relies on a similar pressure as the challenges: if I invite people over to play my game, or bring it to a convention, it has to be ready. A test scheduled at the right moment — where I can reasonably make the changes I want to make, but may not have done so this quickly — can really accelerate the design process.

Make time.

Most of my design progress has been made when I have little else to do, and can progress at a somewhat leisurely pace while still making significant progress. Now that life has sped up, scheduling blocks of uninterrupted design time into my calendar is a must. There’s something to the boundedness of a calendar block that usually spurs me into action.

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I don’t think these ideas are particularly revolutionary, but they do the trick for me more often than not. Hope your 2025 is off to a good start.

Happy gaming,

Mat