Plainview Farms Notes

For the vast amount of development I’ve done with games like Issliss and various roleplay-related games, I’ve used a computer. When I needed to sketch things out broadly, I’d use something like Scrivener. For lists, I’d tend toward Sublime. When I needed collaboration, I used to use Google Docs (before I de-googled myself this year). But all of these programs had one fatal flaw – distraction.

Trying to carve out a time to write was difficult because I’d start, I’d get into a flow, then I would need to research something and pull up a web browser. I’d do my little searches, and then immediately get distracted. Gotta post on social media. Oh, what’s that? Better repost that, make sure everyone knows. Better check the timeline, too, see what’s going on. After a little while, my writing time was over and I’d barely have scratched the surface until I was done.

My (future Mrs.) lesbian girlfriend is an avid typewriter collector, who is very talented at restoring old typewriters. She’s also extremely knowledgeable about the operation and maintenance of these finicky machines. On a whim, I asked her if she had one I might be able to use, and if she could teach me how to use it for writing notes for Plainview. She obliged, adding that she had the perfect one. Apparently the same kind of typewriter that my favorite author Cormac McCarthy used for “Blood Meridian.” I was instantly sold.

So it was that I began using a typewriter to sketch out the broad strokes of Plainview Farms. What I learned from this process shocked me – not only was I getting a lot more done using a typewriter than when I was using my computer, but I was feeling much more focused and creative in the process. The reason is plain – I was no longer feeling the pull of social media and the internet at large, and could narrow down my focus without distraction.

While writing these documents on a typewriter, one thing became clear – looping them into my workflow was going to be a challenge. I needed all this data to be in a computer at some point, which meant typing it all up over again. I considered using OCR for this, but decided against it – after all, typing things a second time would give me a chance to make changes and edits before sharing all this data with my team.

I don’t own a scanner. Instead, I took a picture with my phone, popped them into a folder, and sync that folder to storage with my computer where I set up the digitized typewritten notes on one side of the screen, and my collaboration software on the other. This is the best workflow I’ve found, and I actually adore it as a setup.

If you aren’t familiar with Plainview Farms, it’s a new video game developed by Fablescraps in the same vein as popular classic cozy farming sim games with a twist – instead of farming produce, you are an alien sent to earth to farm human meat. It’s a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I’m thrilled to see so much progress. The team expects to have a demo by the end of the year, so expect a lot more updates in 2025. Sign up for the newsletter to be the first to hear about them.