Hello!
I'm Pastoral, and this is a new weblog series that I'm calling "Pastoral Plays through Worldbuilding Games on itch.io and Then Blogs about Them."
As this blog's working title suggests, I will be (slowly but surely) sharing my personal experiences playing through the physical games on itch.io tagged with "worldbuilding." For those unfamiliar, these are games that allow the player to construct an imaginary setting (or world) — employing a system of various prompts and processes to help harness the player's creative imagination and sense of discovery.
I am an amateur worldbuilder who has been feeling a little stuck with worldbuilder's block (my own seventh day rest, I suppose), and I'm using this blog series as an excuse to try out a bunch of tools that will (purportedly) help me to just play around and have fun with worldbuilding. I'm no expert when it comes to this, but I hope that sharing my experiences with these games from the point-of-view of a self-described amateur might help inspire other fellow amateurs, maybe?
In short, each post will cover a different worldbuilding game available on itch.io. I'll play through the game to construct a new imaginary setting from scratch (or, more rarely, flesh out existing concepts that I already have in mind). Then, I'll provide a short write-up on 1) the world that I was able to build through playing the game, and 2) my personal experiences with each game (e.g., how did I feel while using these games to worldbuild? What did the game help me to do? Was there anything difficult about the process?)
That's it, really! To conclude, I know that the most well-known worldbuilding games are paid games, but I will be starting out with blogging through the 84 (as of my time of writing) free worldbuilding games first. For one, this blog is just a hobby, so I can't justify dropping $5 or $15 on each and every post (unless..? đź‘€). For another, as a total newbie when it comes to game reviews, I'm unsure about the etiquette of freely sharing information about game mechanics that come from paid games. Maybe if there's a paid game I really want to cover one day, I'll ask the original designer for their permission. But for now, I'm comfortable just writing about worlds constructed with games that anybody at all can download for themselves from itch.io right now.
Oh, I lied. Another thing: I know a lot of worldbuilding games are collaborative, but I'll be playing through the ones that can be done solo (at least until I can wrangle some friends into this endeavour with my boundless charm and charisma).
Anyway, just sit yourself down on that couch right over there and put on whatever you like. I'll call you over when the next post is ready for serving, alright?
P.S. For context, this blog series was greatly inspired by my own fondness for "read-through" blogposts and threads, in which people share their "live" reactions, points-of-view, thoughts, and opinions on whatever they're reading of watching—inviting readers to come along and join them for the ride. For example, there's Mark Oshiro's legendary read-through of the entire Discworld series, and Chekhov's read-through of Dungeon Meshi, which I personally enjoy reading very much. Honestly, I think the prospect of being able to share my experiences with someone else who might somehow benefit from my play-throughs and write-ups gives me reason and motivation to actually explore all these games that I've wanted to check out for a long time, so really, thank you for being there for me, hypothetical audience.