For unsaid reasons, Farran recently pushed for a more accelerated development cycle, including asset planning, mechanics tooling, art direction, and more. At the moment (and it's been this way since that request came in), we have a very undetailed and incomplete map of the world, four cultures, and a very base amount of content for each of them. I, personally, feel that we're too early in the design process to start making decisions about how the game will feel and play, and I don't think we're ready to start making assets without having those ideas securely in place.
Interestingly, a fellow game designer and worldbuilder came to me this week, asking for my input on the stuff he's created so far. Curious, I took a look at his content, found it to be very well-thought out, and offered my advice in the form of questions. He wanted to know how to flesh out particular items that were missing, such as building types, technologies, and the like. If you take a gander at my Twitter feed, you'll see the stuff I'm talking about. Essentially, I asked him questions about his cultures, and his responses filled in the gaps, just as he wanted. It made me feel productive, as it brought back memories of working with other very successful teams.
Feeling good about my success with helping him out, I had a chance to meet again with Farran, discussing the various aspects that I'd helped with earlier. Somehow, the conversation ballooned into a discussion of how to refine the magic system in the world, and we ended up covering dynamic map generation, forming a rough draft for a framework that would make a good chunk of our game code. In the end, worldbuilding caused mechanics to fall into place, which is exactly what I thought would happen. I ended up sharing the idea with Mr. Bond, and things are in motion.
I still feel we need to build out the world more before we talk about the specifics of art styles and whatnot, but in the end, we're further along than before.
