This past week I have rediscovered, if indeed I ever truly forgot, just how easily I am distracted by the smallest of things.

Some careless comment last week has led to me reliving some childhood memories of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s all much much shorter than I remember and much simpler too, although this could be a decade old muscle memory kicking in as I pick up the old clunky Megadrive controller.

I’ve also discovered a small game that I’ve read about a couple of times called “Game Dev Story”, a simple sim game where you run your own game studio by hiring, firing and developing new games to earn money. It’s so remarkably insultingly easy, being essentially a spreadsheet with pictures, yet it is also so unbelievably compelling that I have been compulsively “developing games” all day and now have my own console, the “Uberdrive” and a good four sequel ridden franchises.

It’s actually been an interesting exercise in understanding sequels and why they are so prevalent: They sell and aren’t in any way shape or form a risk. It is however rather sad that even in a simple simulation game, I fall into the trap that many real life studios fall into anyway of just reiterating their same titles again and again. Regardless, if you have some kind of iDevice, I would take a look, just to see what ti’s about.

These distractions that have been attacking and successfully derailing me can only mean one thing: I have a couple of projects that I want to do, which of course shoots my susceptibility to such distractions sky high. I shall post more about these when I have done a bit more, but to cut a boring story short, I’m making a new game and am inordinately proud of where it is so far.