So what’s a “Banananomicon” anyway?

When eldritch scholars of the simian kind need to record their forbidden rituals for future cultist generations they scribble those in the Banananomicon, duh. But as you so keenly pointed out there are no dark secrets about elongated berries of plants of the genus Musa here, so in this context it is just a name I came up with for my foray into game development. The name has it all: whimsy and an allusion to sinister magicks.

…right, so what’s this about then?

As I turned 35 I had a long and serious one-on-one with myself about what I should do with my life. Working in tech is certainly fine and I do work in a meaningful domain but it’s still just, you know, work. A thing you do for money, something you have to do so that your kid can have nice things. But a thing that I’d want to sink all my waking hours into? Yeah, no, Kubernetes and Python are not my life’s passion.

But games? Now that’s the oldest friend I have, the one thing that has followed me from childhood to this day. While I have dabbled in game development sporadically throughout my life it’s never really been purposeful, sketches and ideas scribbled in notebooks do not a game make. But then came the summer of 2021. An idea turned into sketches in a notebook, as they do, but then for whatever reason those sketches turned into more sketches, then into card templates, drafts of rules, player board templates… and finally I realized I had a playable prototype in my hands. I had finally gotten over that mental hump of not pushing forward with ideas.

So, that brings us to this blog. I need to write copious amounts of notes anyway so why not refine at least some of those and publish them. Maybe I’ll stumble upon a video game that I feel like sharing thoughts about, those will end up here too. Probably need to work out a workflow for Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia development sooner rather than later; yes, also that belongs here. And if I ever succeed in actually making it in game development? You can bet your wooden cubes that’s going to be worth a post.

-Tatu