Odd Little World
This was my project for our second "Zine Game Jam" with Flyover Indies and KC Zine Con. We had a week to create a game in zine format. Initially I intended to try and keep my concept small--something that would be easy to do in just one week. But I pretty quickly scrapped that goal and decided to try and wedge a whole civilization game into a zine.
The original jam version looked pretty different than this one--it was something like 24-pages, quarter-sized, had a bunch of rules and things to keep track of. I never really tried to playtest it, because it became clear fast that it would just be way too much to keep track of.
When I came back to the project after the jam was over, I knew I needed to cut a lot out & simplify things as much as possible. To encourage that, I gave myself a limit that the final rules would have to fit in a 16-page minizine. It was not easy!! But I am pretty happy with how it turned out.
Odd Little World is definitely just a casual, silly sort of game--more about creating a shared story than competing. But the random prompt cards (or the online prompt-generator) can create all sorts of fun and wacky places, groups, and things that you'll encounter as you explore your planet & build cities & roads.