New Ideas For Colorstream

For the last month, I've been feeling aimless about Colorstream. It was based on an old game jam project of mine called In This Garden that had very similar puzzles but with mechanical objects and a lab setting. After trying to design 'natural' puzzle objects and not getting very far, I started borrowing ideas from this old project. Then, for the last milestone, I took all the work I'd done on the puzzles and put them in an environment from In This Garden, changing the view to first-person and adding functionality for grabbing, releasing, and rotating objects in this new view. I think it turned out pretty well.

Then, this week, I had an epiphany. For a long time, I've had a vision of a game called Haven. However, my thoughts were more focused on the environment, and until now I wasn't sure what the gameplay would look like. That's when I realized that the puzzles I've been working on could actually work in Haven in an interesting and unique way. That theme would be an abstract, ethereal space with objects and beings composed of pure light. In this new theme, the puzzles are almost like constellations. I absolutely love this idea, and I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from games such as Abzu and flOw. The problem is that this new idea has a decent amount of technical debt. I've already made a transition from Unity to Unreal which took a lot longer than expected, so I would need to be sure about this.

The way I see it, there are three options. First, I can work on the original idea of Colorstream, which is one that I've lost motivation for and understanding of. Second, I can keep all the work I've done on the puzzles and start working on In This Garden again. Based on the last milestone, I know this would work. Third, just like with In This Garden, I can keep the puzzles and change the environment. Unlike In This Garden, I haven't started on any of the assets. However, considering the kind of companies I want to get hired by, I think it could make a better portfolio project than either of the other projects. So, I've decided to create a prototype of Haven. I want to see a mockup of the player and environment and see how the puzzles fit into that environment. If I can't do that in a reasonable amount of time or if I see any major issues that I can't solve, then I'll choose In This Garden. Otherwise, if I'm happy with the prototype and feel like this is doable, I'll choose Haven. Either way, I'll be happy. I think both ideas have the potential to turn into a beautiful game, and that's all I can hope to create.