When a New Idea Shows Up Mid-Project

Red Reaction is almost out the door. So of course I started thinking about a tower defence game.

The timing could not be worse (or better)

Red Reaction is ready. The first version is done, tested, and waiting to go live on the App Store and Google Play. The only thing holding it back is some paperwork on the Android account I plan to publish with. Google support is sorting it out, and in the worst case it means up to a 30-day delay.

Thirty days sounds like plenty of time to do useful things. Test more on iPhone. Polish the store page. Plan the launch. And I will do those things.

But somewhere in that waiting room, a new idea walked in.

The new idea: a tower defence game for playing with your mates

It's a multiplayer tower defence game. You build and defend your own tower, you build an army to attack other people's towers, and you can team up with friends. Or, if you feel like it, go rogue and cause a bit of havoc.

Let's be honest: it's not an original idea. Tower defence games exist. Multiplayer ones exist. But this is a game I want to make, and more importantly, a game I want to play myself, with my friends.

It's also a completely different genre from Red Reaction. One is a quick reaction-speed game you play for a minute on your phone. The other is a 3D strategy game with towers, hover tanks, groups and progression. Different engine, different scale, different everything.

And that's exactly the dangerous part.

My actual superpower: switching projects

If there's one skill I've truly mastered, it's getting a new, more exciting idea, jumping onto it, and leaving the old project behind. The new idea is always shinier. It has no bugs yet. It has no boring parts yet. It's pure potential.

The old project, meanwhile, is at the stage where the fun creative work is done and what's left is store listings, screenshots, account verification, and marketing. Not exactly the stuff that gets you out of bed.

I know this pattern well enough to know that if I don't do something about it, Red Reaction becomes another folder on my hard drive that almost made it.

So what drives an indie game idea?

The new idea made me stop and ask a bigger question: why am I making games at all? And should I be trying to make money with them?

Monetization can shape a game from the very first sketch. Premium or free? Ads? In-app purchases? Battle pass? If money is the main goal, those questions come first, and the game gets designed around them.

I thought about it, and I decided that's not my starting point.

I will work on games I would like to play myself.

That's the driver. Not market research, not the most profitable genre, not the monetization model. If a game makes money later, great. That's something I can think about once there's actually a game. But it isn't the reason to start one, and it won't decide what the game becomes.

The rule: work on it until there's something to publish

To keep my project-hopping in check, I set myself one simple principle:

I work on a game until there is something to publish.

Not until it's perfect. Not until it has every feature I dreamed of. Just until there's a real version that real people can download and play.

For Red Reaction, that means the next step isn't the tower defence game. It's getting Red Reaction finished, published and marketed. The waiting time for the Android account is for testing on iPhone, preparing the store pages, and planning how people will actually find the game.

The tower defence idea doesn't get thrown away. I'm writing it down, sketching it out and letting it grow in the background. But Red Reaction gets shipped first.

Don't marry the first version of the idea

There's one more thing I want to be careful about with the new game. I don't want to get too attached to the first version of the idea.

Right now I have a picture in my head: towers with stacked platforms, hover tanks, groups of friends fighting each other. But I want to be free to follow the game wherever it leads. If playing it shows me that something else is more fun, I want to be able to turn the whole thing in that direction without feeling like I've betrayed the plan.

So the rule is: commit to finishing, but not to the first idea. Stay stubborn about shipping, stay flexible about what gets shipped.

Where that leaves me

• Red Reaction: ready for its first release. Waiting on the Android account, then out on both stores. After that, marketing.
• The tower defence game: a game I want to play with my mates. Early design is happening, and it's allowed to change shape as it goes.
• The principle: make games I want to play, and keep working on them until there's something to publish.

If you're an indie developer with a graveyard of half-finished projects, I'd love to hear how you handle the shiny new idea. Do you write it down and move on? Do you let yourself switch? Or do you have a rule like mine?

I'll let you know how it goes. Red Reaction first.