I’ve messed up my dates and unfortunately missed the anniversary of the first game dev log for Creature in the Basement, which was on August 25th of 2025. Nevertheless, I can still take a look back at a year of game development.
Who could have imagined that this simple idea of a ghost hunting board game would have taken such a shape? Looking back at the very first version, it seems almost incomparable to where the game is standing right now. There were no meaningful decisions whatsoever. It supported only a single player and the only thing they could do was move and search in hopes of getting 3 clues before running out of actions.
Now, we’re 1 year, 2 events, 48 playtests, and 21 versions further. The game has seen many evolutions in that time, with the introduction of unique items, stress dice, sanity checks, multiplayer, a procedurally-generated map, the stressed condition, and activity tokens. Some of these I actually foresee being removed again, the same way call actions, group actions, and hiding have come and gone. And perhaps they may even return after that, like the search action has done. Not to mention the many component upgrades I’ve done, like player boards, search tokens, equipment cards, and a prettier game board.
Although I’ve made much progress this past year, I’m far from being done. With the latest updates, I feel like I’m getting close to completing the first part of the game. I’ll need to work out the final kinks and validate the game with the general public at the next Ducosim event, but after that I can hopefully begin on the second part. I’ve already done a lot of thinking about what this should look like, but only once the first part is done can I commit to testing the various options for the second part. And I don’t doubt that that will also take a long time to finalize, if only due to the many different creatures that will be in the game. But I’m excited to transition to part 2, to see how that will be received.
And perhaps, hopefully, one year from now, I can look back at the journey to the game’s completion.