"Good enough"

There was a post I remember reading on The Forge about how it's better to release a meh game then not to release any game at all. It's something I'm eventually going to need to convince myself, but it's hard.

There are really two elements that I worry will not be good enough. The first is the theme. My game is set on a prison island. It is supposed to be about survival, and is supposed to be dark. At least in the real world. In the fantasy world, it is supposed to be utterly surreal. I worry that I don't do either of those points justice. I'm trying to work on that. I've debated trying to do my own artwork for the surreal part. I've also been working on flavor text to stick here and there, and on changing the names to really reflect this. Still though, I've sometimes thought that perhaps my basic back-story is not good enough.

Second, I worry sometimes that this game isn't getting playtested enough. I mean, it would take years and years to playtest every combination of abilities. I worry that inevitably there is going to be one or two strategies that dominate the rest, and that'll be no fun. Plus I worry that I won't be able to thoroughly test each special mission and special rule. I've debated if I should just give it a one or two time go, and see if they're alright. The later I'm less worried about, because if, say, the Assassinate mission is horrible, then no one will play it. I've sometimes debated if I'm going to need to drop some of them (or if it would be better to just release them under insufficient playtesting).

I don't know, I remember reading on The Forge a comment about a game (can't remember which one, but saw it a few times), that the game had such a good idea, but just wasn't well done. I worry sometimes that that will be Illeria. I don't know, as I said, I'll do what I can, but at some point a meh game is better than no game.

Simon

PS Random note: I really need to change my bio, stop saying that I'm about to go to Africa. I've done that, I'm back

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible.” – Mark Twain