Idle reader, you can believe without any oath of mine that I would wish this book, as the child of my brain, to be the most beautiful, the liveliest and the cleverest imaginable. But I have been unable to transgress the order of nature, by which like gives birth to like. And so, what could my sterile and ill-cultivated genius beget but the story of a lean, shrivelled, whimsical child, full of varied fancies that no one else has ever imagined…
~Cervantes, Don Quixote

Well, it’s time to select the topic for my first ‘Game in a Week’ project, which will formally begin tomorrow. I’ve selected a book from my bookshelf; Don Quixote, by Cervantes. This is a Penguin Classics edition, translated by J. M. Cohen. This particular copy of the book may charitably be described as “well loved”, but it’s still in good enough shape to provide a spark of inspiration for this first game, and it seems a very appropriate book to use.

Opening the book to a random page, I check the first complete sentence, from which I will select at least one word to serve as the seed for the game I build. The page number is 401, and the first sentence completely on that page is:

Beauteous damsel, your petition is ill-timed, for I am prevented from embarking on any other adventure until I have brought the one to which I have pledged myself to a successful conclusion.

…and I’ve no clue what I’m going to do with that. I’m sure I can work a damsel in, and perhaps something about being “ill-timed” or even some gameplay element about making petitions or pledges.. Oh well; I guess I’ll have my designing work cut out for me tomorrow!