#IridiumMoons is such a great game concept I have come up with, but it never stops feeling intimidating. Even with late 90s Raw 3D graphics, the amount of modelling and texture work for all the equipment, architecture, vehicles, and all the greeblies on the walls of ruined factories and power plants is daunting.

A fantasy game in my #Kaendor setting, that looks like Thief with double the polygon count and more texture colors seems much easier, even with having to model and animate monsters.

For the last couple of months now, work on making progress with #IridiumMoons consists to 90% of time spend trying to come up with an idea how I could make something playable out of #Kaendor.

Those other 10% are actually making really good progress that is looking like it has the making of something really amazing that could become a hit.

But I would be so much more efficient if I could stop thinking "I really want to do Bronze Age with dinosaur fantasy, though..."

The Pilgrimage

https://spriggans-den.com/2025/05/09/the-pilgrimage/

Spring arrived with full force right on schedule on 1st March, and immediately my inspiration for my high fantasy world #Kaendor came back as if it had never been gone. (This seems to be happening every winter.)

It's a kind of fantasy world that I really love, but that's always been teetering right on the edge of pure cringe. It's a wild forest world inhabited by high elves, wood elves, and gnomes. If anyone would introduce a fantasy setting like that too me, I would immediately want to run.

The main issues that has plagued my open-world-ish ruin exploration ImSim without resource gathering and crafting mechanics #Kaendor since I started drafting up concept for games is that I could never really think of a long-term gameplay loop or reward structure.

Something I am considering now is an explorer's notebook similar to the exploration tracking screen in The Outer Wilds. Expanding your log of things you've discovered and info you collected could be a motivator and goal in itself.

I think I am coming to the realization that I am running into the very same obstacle with #Nemaril as I was never able to overcome with #Kaendor in something like 10 years.

All my really good fantasy ideas are about aesthetics. It's all visuals and feels. And those are very calm and chill.

Which would be a great setting for painting. Or even a farming game or a chilled survival game.

But the aesthetic is so conflict averse that it's never getting suited for my kind of RPGs or ImSims.

Having successfully fused my recent fantasy worldbuilding project #Darkwind with some of my best ideas from my earlier #ttrpg world #Kaendor into something that I really like, I settled on naming it Nemaril.

I don't think it's a particularly good or interesting name, but I checked and there's nothing like it on the internet already, and it doesn't totally suck.

Which is really everything we can ask for when naming our creations. 😎

And "Shadows over Nemaril" is a cool game title.

#Nemaril

Pretty happy with how the concept for aesthetics and geography of my fantasy world for an ImSim is looking right now.

But what it is really still seriously is weird freaky stuff. What's the point of a retro first person game these days if it isn't really weird shit? That's the punk spirit of retro-indie-games!

#Kaendor