I missed posting yesterday, so now comes the question: when I miss a day do I try to make it up or do I ignore it and continue? Certainly when I already have a regular habit, like cello, I prefer to ignore the missed day and continue regardless so that there's no friction to me coming back to it ("it has to be BIGGER and BETTER because I MISSED ONE").

For the moment though I'm trying to have an idea a day, so I'll try and make up for a missed day as long as it's just one. I thought I might try combining the two and making an idea that is both for a computer game and a board game.

I'd love to do a companion game to my Dragon's Wrath idea. In Dragon's Wrath you are a dragon, and you wake up to find some human tribesmen have stolen gold from your hoard. You emerge from your mountain and destroy the upstart humans, bring back the gold (and any extra that the humans had) and go back to sleep.

A hundred years later, you awaken again, but this time you are older and more powerful and the humans have also advanced. Now they have armour and castles and swords.

And so we repeat, each time going forward in time and you being more powerful and facing more powerful foes. The game itself is top-down, and you're flying around breathing fire on things, and picking up trees and dropping them on people and then setting fire to the trees etc.

I worked a bit on the Dragon's Wrath game on a game jam, but didn't finish it. I still like the idea but I wonder if I could do a companion game that represents the time that you're asleep and dreaming?

What would dragons dream about? You're sleeping on your lovely gold and obviously it's super comfortable. You're probably going to be woken up by a nightmare where you're losing things, to find out that's what's really happening. Maybe there's an advantage in this game to staying asleep as long as possible so that you awaken maximally refreshed - or maybe it's a super simple game like Red Light Green Light where you want to wake up at exactly the right moment when the humans have only just started stealing from you - if you wake too early and go back to sleep, you aren't as refreshed when you have to fully wake up. If you wake up too late the humans have trapped you and you're doomed.

So in your dreams there are signs and portents that intensify as humans gather - perhaps it's a card game where your job is to work out whether the deck is being manipulated, or (say) a matching game where some of the older face-down cards are swapped when you aren't looking. Let's take it at its simplest: you flip coins, and if the humans are around the coin flips are biased, and the more the humans are around the more biased the flips are.

Oh, I have it. It's a push your luck game. You flip over cards one at a time; each has rewards that you'll reap when you wake up. You can lock in the rewards by passing, but each time you pass you lose time. And if you keep pushing your luck you go bust. And the presence of humans gooses the "bad" result, making it more likely.

So let's design a push your luck game. I like Flip7 as a starting point; what if each card has a colour and a number. When you flip a card, if you have that number or more of cards with that colour, you go bust. There's a distribution of numbers, but none less than 2. Say, you flip a 3 of yellow. If that card means you now have 3 yellows or more, you go bust. Otherwise you can flip another card or pass.

Each card you flip costs 1 time, and passing costs (say) 3 time. You can also awaken which costs 6 time, and if you awaken when there are humans around you enter the Dragon's Wrath phase of the game; otherwise you go back to sleep and continue.