Playing games

To help me with my latest game play ideas I've been doing a lot of playing of games that have similar mechanics. The thing to keep in mind with anything creative is that there are hardly any truly original ideas anymore. Hardly any game comes out that is totally mind blowingly new. But there is the evolution of ideas that allows things to change and improve. I try and achieve this by looking at game mechanics that haven't gone together before but could.

My latest fooling around borrows from classic match 3 style games like Luxor and Bust-A-Move. I'm trying to add a different colour mixing mechanic as a new twist. We'll see how it goes.

One thing I've noticed with solo game design is that it pretty much sucks. Working on your own it's hard to come up with a tonne of stellar ideas. That's why this time I'm going to do more prototyping and running ideas by people I know. Any input has to help.