Four game ideas, one core: why we chose island conquest
We drafted four concepts for our next game. All four shared one core, sending troops between nodes. Here is why we kept the core, dropped the story and put it on the sea.
Inkisle starts with a choice that was easy to describe and hard to make: which game do we build next?
Four concepts, one core
We wrote four short pitches. They looked very different on the surface:
| Pitch | Dressing |
|---|---|
| A. Tide | Warm southern islands, tides that open and close sandbars |
| B. Before the Letter Arrives | A fictional early-20th-century war drama with couriers |
| C. Alley Boss | A light-hearted neighborhood-cat turf war |
| D. Three A.M. Isles | A night sea inside a tired head, close to our music brand |
Underneath, every pitch used the same core: islands (or any nodes) produce troops, you send a share of them to another node, and the bigger number takes it. That grammar is old and well understood, and it is the part of the genre that makes the fun. We decided the core was settled and only the dressing was open.
The decision
Then two instructions from the owner settled it. First: a territory-grab strategy game, modernized in look, offline for killing time, with networked turns maybe later. Second: no story needed, as long as taking land feels good and makes you want to open the next stage.
So the story pitches went to the archive, and the core stayed. The sea became the stage because an island is the simplest possible node: a shape, a number, a color.
Why this works on a phone
- Short. A stage is about 3 to 5 minutes. You can start and stop anywhere.
- One hand. Upright screen, drag with a thumb. The ratio buttons sit where the thumb rests.
- Offline. No account, no network. That also keeps the first version small enough to build quickly.
- A reward that is visible. When you capture an island its color fills in like spreading ink. The map of cleared seas slowly turns into your color.
What the research warned us about
Before writing the rules we read what players of this genre complain about. The two loudest complaints were advertising and pay-to-win. A third was the long, boring mop-up at the end of a won match. Those became rules for us: no ads, no pay-to-win, and a "decisive win" rule that ends a match you have clearly won.
What we have not checked
We have not tested the idea on outside players yet. The pitches and the research are our own reading of the genre, not measured demand. The next posts show the rules, the name, the art and a prototype, and they say what has and has not been measured.