Awkward Dinner Party: Experimenting with style...

Work is officially underway for my game, Awkward Dinner Party for Romantic Eccentrics! I spent most of today sending out emails, going down history rabbit holes, and experimenting with art.

How To Play:

For those who have been curious about what this game actually entails, here's a rough outline: Everyone is assigned a "secret character". you can see the image of your own character, and the image of everyone else at the dinner party, but you do not know who is playing each character. Before play officially begins, you will select your "crush". The objective of the game is to find them, offer them a rose, and have them accept you.

In the first phase, while limited time is counting down, players can go around asking questions about other players. These are appearance questions with a few limitations, kinda like guess who? if you've ever played that. everyone can ask only 3 questions to each other player. But you can also overhear the questions and answers of other players to gain more information, and speak freely about players not present in a conversation. This is the social deduction portion of the game.

When the timer runs out, every player has the opportunity to offer a "rose" to whoever they think is their crush, representing a guess as to their identity. If the player is wrong, they are immediately rejected. If they are correct, there's one last obstacle. If their crush receives multiple roses, the crush may only accept one. If you guess your crush correctly AND they accept your rose, you have won the game.

Does that sound interesting? Well, the game will require an enormous amount of testing for balance and fun. But this is a good start at simulating, I hope, a fancy dinner party where everyone is gossiping about everyone else.

a small experiment in turning a rough sketch into those old-timey lithographic prints!

The first problem...

When I initially pitched this game, I was hoping to use historical figures as a base for the characters that everyone would play. But as I've been researching over the past several days, I ran into a serious problem. It's really hard to find images of historical figures! There are plenty of interesting stories, but the picture quality, style, and era of these historical figures varied so wildly, it was difficult to get a roster that would work within the confines of the game.

It turns out I am probably going to have to make all the illustrations myself--and if that's the case, why not free myself from this initial confinement? I could make a few characters with interesting quirks, and ensure that there is well balanced representation so no one character is easy to guess.

So, tomorrow, you'll probably see a lot more art of these characters.

Thanks for tuning in! Oh, and of course we can't forget the customary thank-you joke. This one really made me cackle!

Q: why are elephants so wrinkly?

A: Because they're very difficult to iron.