The ghost of hamster game haunts me

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I have a penchant for starting coding projects. Some I finish, or mostly finish; others I do not. And in general, I’m starting to believe I spend a little too much time on these projects in general, at the expense of being a more well-rounded person.

But even if I try to restrain myself, ideas for new projects haunt me. They float around my head poping out from behind corners in my mind, with the promise of actualizing some aesthetic vision I’ve had lying around, ill-defined, in my head for a long time.

The latest ghost haunting my mind is an idea for a hamster-keeping game. The aesthetic vision is a nostalgic one for me, inspired by things like Hamtaro, or the Tamagotchi game I had in elementary school. My concept for Server Pets (another as-of-yet unfinished project) fits in a similar slot in my mind.

Whenever I get ghosts of projects like this, I know they are just dreams. It’s not just the idea of the software I want to make, it’s the feeling it represents to me. If I made the game, it would only capture some of that vision.

On the other hand, that’s what a lot of art does: points to some vision or dream beyond itself. My gomepage started as a similar sort of ghost, and I’m pretty satisfied with how I brought it to life. So it’s not realistic to pretend I couldn’t execute on the hamster game either. The bottom line is that it just might not be a wise use of my time right now.

I’ve had some success in the past with “exorcising” ghosts of projects I want to work on by writing about them, for example, an idea for music engraving software that was unrealistic for me to make on my own. In that spirit, here’s the core idea I have for the hamster game. Perhaps I will come back to it, or perhaps writing it down will scratch the itch.

The game would have some typical pet-raising mechanics, like feeding your pet and playing with it in a daily rhythm. The reward for consistent interaction with your pet would be a growing collection of interconnecting pipe pieces, which you could build a whole crazy hamster course out of.

I think the hamster run would be the main meat and potatoes of the game: drag-and-drop pieces to build up a course, which you can watch your hamster run around and explore. The hamster might have particular rule-based behaviors for how it moves through the course, and by understanding its movements and building around them, you can trigger special conditions or find new things.

It does sound like it’d be fun to make. I might end up allocating some (limited!) time to it when I have a chance.

Are you haunted by visions of potential projects? Do you follow those ghosts, or resist them? Are you interested in playing the hamster game? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.