Initial Entry!

Caleb Littlejohn

03-07-2025

Hello!

If you are reading this, welcome to the first ever blog post by BlankSpiral Studios! I appreciate you swinging by and I am excited to share what is happening in these weekly blog posts.The plan for now is to use these to share status updates, fun game dev stories, and perhaps showcase new ideas I am coming up with in my games.

Ah, my games. It’s wonderful to be able to say that.

I’m going to start from the beginning here to describe who I am and what made me want to start BlankSpiral Studios. I am Caleb Littlejohn, a software developer that woke up one day and realized he wasn’t having fun. When did that happen? I wondered, lying in bed until noon on a Saturday. When did the thought of the 9 to 5 grind fill me with dread? When did apathy begin to sink into my day-to-day life?

When did having fun become complicated?

I have always loved games, from the first time I played Mario Party 2 as a child, the first time I saw Yugi play against Kaiba, the first time I rolled dice in Risk. I have loved games and how simple they were, the way they constrained options and gave freedom to solve the problems presented in creative methods. I have loved games and how they give people an opportunity to improve and develop with experience, to become better and better with every attempt.

Most importantly, I love how fun they are.

It’s really as simple as that. Why complicate it? Games are fun.

Ultimately, I made BlankSpiral Studios to remember that for myself. This world can be fun. Maybe not always but it feels better to make an effort to make it better than it does to continue to lay around. And that’s what this is about. I want to help people have fun.

Wow, that was a bit more stream of consciousness than I was intending! Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s talk about the game I am working on now, shall we? I am currently developing a 2D topdown roguelite that has a major focus on cooperative gameplay. Right now, the actual implementation is still getting all the basic systems and mechanics set up, so I’m instead going to talk about the game designs I have in mind. To keep it simple, every design I am making is being judged along two axes, as shown below:

I want to make a roguelite game that rewards player agency and synergy vastly more than individual items or random luck but still allowing for those unique moments that will stand out in players memory. This provides me with a decent filtering system for new ideas and gives a good starting point for trying to implement them. Now, to discuss an idea or before wrapping up this blog post (don’t worry, next week’s post will probably be focused on more of the designs I have in mind!).

When brainstorming ideas for strong, synergistic mechanics that players can make and have an impact on, one of the first things that came to mind was an interactive environment. Being able to not only affect the environment but also the effects that your allies have made already has always been a favorite mechanic of mine. So, now that I have an idea that fits the above criteria, it’s good, right? Not quite. There is more to a fun mechanic than if it fits the above criteria, namely the answer to the question “Why should players use the mechanic at all?” Gamers develop optimal strategies and will not deviate without incentive and that is one of the most difficult things to keep in mind when designing a game. How many games can you think of that had irrelevant mechanics that sound fun but were tedious/nonoptimal? Or, on the flip side, how many were so dominant that there are few reasons to deviate from a single strategy, making the entire game feel same-y? Striking a balance is very important but something too balanced then becomes forgettable or stale. So, the challenge then becomes “I have this idea that sounds good on paper. Can it be implemented effectively such that players find it fun?” Well, more on this next week!

Thank you for making it this far and I hope to develop a more structured approach to these in the near future!