It began almost six years ago with a stray thought ricocheting off the lyrics of Pink Floyd‘s last song, High Hopes, and it ended Wednesday this week. Admittedly, the role-playing game I set out to write in 2004 (in Swedish) is very different from the finished text now on my hard drive. In fact, the only thing that is still left is the name, Magneter och mirakel, and the core concept of a world of magnets and miracles (see this post for more about the game itself). The game has been read, revised and play tested numerous times along the way. It has also been completely rewritten from scratch twice. In fact, I had a version I dared to call “complete” as far back as September 2009 (in Swedish). Perhaps it was foolish of me to spend so much time on a single project (although I have contributed to and written other games as well), but now at last I hope that I can fully engage my creative energy elsewhere.

So, what do I mean when I say that the text is finished? It means that I’ve written approximately 900 000 characters and that I’m satisfied with the result. However, that doesn’t mean that you will be able to buy Magneter och mirakel tomorrow, because there are two major tasks left: illustrations and layout. The first one is by far the biggest problem (and yes, I truly regard it as a problem). If producing games only consisted of writing or if I were a skilled artist myself, this hobby would be a lot more pleasant. Alas, that’s not the case, which means I’ll need to find someone else to do this for me. I trust that the end result will be satisfactory, but it might take time and money. Layout can be solved within Kaleidoskop, which doesn’t mean iẗ́’s less important, but it’s a problem that I have a plan for how to solve.

Still, having finished the text is by far the biggest step in the process and has required hundreds and hundreds of hours of work, and having finished such a large-scale project feels very good. Not only does it give me great pleasure to know that I’ve managed to take somethings as small as a single sentence and turn it into a well-thought out product, but it will also enable me to move on to other projects (such as my novel). It remains to be seen if other people also think my creation is worthwhile, but to be honest, that is not the important thing here.

So does this  is the last thing I’ll write about Magneter och mirakel here? I doubt I will write much about this projcet on this website in the future, perhaps only when it’s time to publish or if something interesting happens. This does not mean that I won’t write anything about it, nothing could be further from the truth, but since the game is written in Swedish, I think Kaleidoskop.se is a far better channel for information, previews, announcements and discussions. For now, however, my work with Magneter och mirakel is over and it’s time to move on!