After scratching through a few designs for my MAGIC game this morning, I'm rapidly coming the conclusion that this game is unsalvagable. Unfortunately my original plan, a kind of cow balancing game based on cartoony physics, doesn't seem to be workable as a game. Every attempt to rescue it by either thinking of new gameplay dynamics and/or replacing the cows with something else either also falls flat or ends up a shallow rehash of Tower of Goo.

I figure if I dedicate most of Saturday and Sunday to a feverish lock-in game developing crunch fest there's a 30 to 50 percent chance I could put together a fine game by the official contest end. However if I do that, I'll be completely burnt out on Monday when I need to be an alert game judge. At a more sensible relaxed pace I don't think I can get more than a hamfisted (or should that be beeffisted?) mock-up done by Monday morning.

All in all I don't think it's worth flogging a dead cow, so I might as well concentrate on my role as contest administrator and judge from now on, and switch to redesigning the engine. I guess with prototyping game ideas you'll always have to deal with more than a few duds.