I played a small free game recently. It was genuinely simple, and I could not stop thinking about it afterwards. The music and the atmosphere stayed with me for days, in a way that is hard to explain by saying it was good.
After that I wanted to make something that turns my own interior into a space you can walk through.
Rooms instead of paragraphs
The scale does not need to be large. It does not need to be finished-looking. What I want is for my taste, the things I value, and the thoughts I have been holding onto for too long to exist as rooms and objects rather than as text — so the player finds them by walking, at their own pace, and decides for themselves what is worth stopping in front of.
It is first person, and the protagonist is me. That is not a metaphor I am building towards; it is just the setup.
The ending, on purpose
I want the ending to leave something behind. Clues that do not resolve, meanings that stay slightly out of focus, a small feeling that lasts longer than it should. The point is that the player keeps assembling it after they have closed the game.
That is the hardest part to design, and the only part I am certain about.
Where it is now
Blocked out, walkable, unscored. The rooms exist and most of them are still empty, which is roughly accurate.