thinkings for this are... "what kind of design would elicit the feeling that seemed to accompany the game in the dream."
secondarily, "what would be fun to play" is filling in the design gaps

not that i ever end up doing much, but...
i'd love to make games with environments (and the protagonist's place in them) that might cause the player to feel a bit lonely, or pensive, or unsteady, or faintly threatened, or so on... idk

but like... all in a low-key, low-energy, maybe calming sort of way, i guess

i mean, those are mostly kind of negative feelings, now that i look at them. i guess that reflects my attitude towards life <<
but i'd like to convey optimistic feelings too. finding a new home. meeting friendly people. travelling through strange and pretty locations. i uh. yeah

on even more of a tangent, i realized my semi-characters, the picayune bear and toothpaste duo, are very... wanderers. i'd imagined the duo as looking for somewhere safe to settle down. and the bear as indefinitely passing through and moving on.

though, they'd have more choice in it, after a point. the bear's motives aren't clear, maybe he just prefer not settling down. the duo might have a home, but go wandering anyway just to see what's out there. i dunno. probably won't ever get around to manifesting any of this.

oh, and i think the name of this dream-game was something like "Breathe". i'd forgotten that but it's in my notes. gives a couple extra implications about the kind of game it might be.

i vaguely imagine famitory's music as the kind of soundtrack to have for the timer game since it's fast and driving, though it's probably partially because i started listening to it at the same time i started thinking about the game