In this post, I'll talk a bit about the development process behind Warded Wishes, because it was kinda a hilarious mess. If you don't want to see me spill my guts and literally just braindump onto a digital page, then you might not want to read this lol. In short, I knew the risks I was taking but boy, am I bad at math.

So, let's go section by section:

The Timeline

So here's the first mistake. I know the timeline for my game, and I know how long it takes (all of the time). This year, I got way into Larping again, and ngl when one of those events is happening or about to happen, my brain zooms in hard and loses focus on everything else. I ended up spending way too much time just like, crafting and focusing on Larp.

So anywho, all of the Larps wrap up for the season and I look at my calendar. It's hekkin start of April. Well, end of the first week of April, really. Shit. Throughout the process, I had been brainstorming how different systems could work and I'd been thinking about the game for a year at this point, so I had about 2 pages of bullet points. That had to change, fast.

This was also when I was starting up GMing a new TTRPG campaign, so that went on hiatus for a while.

Over the next 2 weeks, the idea became "I'll just make a set of rules for a Magical Girl skirmish game, no narrative rules needed!" That's not what ended up happening. 2 weeks of staying up too late later, I had a version that was ready for a combat playtest. That showed that the foundation was sound, and a week after that all of the narrative rules were completed and the Contractor side was done, at least they were at 1am today.

The Rules

Luckily, Warded Wishes wanted to be an iteration of It'd Take a Miracle. Writing things from scratch takes a lot of time, but so much of the game could be adapted from ITAM and 2MMG. I knew after making ITAM that I wanted a version that used a combat map, and I knew that I really liked 2MMG's Magical Specialties, so I made those a thing! I also wanted combat to be large-scale, since Magical Girls run around on Rooftops, not hide behind columns shooting magic across a room. Plus, if the Monstrosities are the size of a skyscraper, then I could just make each tile the size of a Skyscraper!

So yeah, a lot was taken from ITAM, and honestly the game's all the better for it.

The Cover

My vision for the cover is a landscape of a factory full of pipes, a main Magical Girl sitting on one that crosses over a main path, one on a smokestack in the distance, and the background shows the skyscrapers of the City. That is to say, I didn't think I had time to make a cover. However, at midnight, meaning it was the same day I wanted to release by, I realized that I had assets from the previous 2 covers, and I could re-render and asset flip them into something. It just needed to be a temporary cover, just something to last until I could model/commission my vision...

So, 30 minutes of rendering and compositing later, we get this guy, the cover that never was!

Then I realize I could make a back cover by, get this, just making it look like you're looking at the cover from the back. I re-rendered some stuff, flipped around my layers in Photoshop, did some more compositing and boom! Another 30 minutes makes this back cover!

I did a quick test and got some suggestions, and then on the drive to work on the day of release, I think of a better idea for a cover, a Soul Gem inside of a Curse Crystal. I get back from work and 30 minutes later I asset flip my own asset flipped cover. Then I made the itch page and hit publish, basically.

The Takeaway

The game's not done yet, and that's almost entirely my fault (I did end up porting a bunch of my NPCs from various games and the Boat Crew from my ITAM campaign in as premade Magical Girls and that took longer than expected lol), but at the end of the day if you take notes and reflect on your process, then we can learn something from this and call it even more of a win.

Lesson 1: Stick to your Timeline

This is pretty self-explanatory. Time Management is a big deal if you're trying to make a TTRPG in a month and a half.

Lesson 2: Be True to your Wishes

If your heart says "Make a game with grid combat and jumping around rooftops and magical specialties", then don't compromise. I feel exhausted now, but very satisfied. If I had compromised and just made a combat system, it would've been cool, but it wouldn't be what I really desired.

Lesson 3: Make your own Fate

One of my friends sent me a link to a podcast with Tom Bloom, artist of Kill 6 Billion Demons and lead rules designer for LANCER, ICON, Maleghast, and many other cool games, and this was when I had about a week and a half left of my deadline. Tom said something along the lines of "People value the work not because of the ideas you may have, but the suffering you put into it to make the work real." and I felt that. When things get down to the wire, sometimes you need to make some sacrifices, like not doing your TTRPG , skipping Helldivers with your friends so you can focus, and being out of the loop with seasonal anime for like 3 weeks. You just gotta DO IT. And hey, now I have yet another TTRPG under my belt, although it's not done yet...

So, with all that said, I'm gonna go take a break. I think it's time to crack open some windows, grab a beer, and watch some goddamn Madoka Magica. Happy Walpurgisnacht~