The book this week is “The Complete Home Confectioner” by Hilary Walden. It’s copyrighted 1986 by Quarto Publishing Ltd.

This is the book that I used to learn how to make toffee, butterscotch, fudge, and other such candies, and is on extremely extended loan from a friend (and I really ought to get around to returning it!)

But since I still have it, down it came from the shelf, and I randomly opened it to page 76, which happens to be the first page dealing with Jellies (I have a bitter feud with Turkish delight, which I have never managed to successfully create, despite literally dozens of attempts. Someday I will give in and just use gelatine instead of trying to use the traditional recipes which use corn starch).

In any case, the first complete sentence on page 76 is:

“The diversity of jellied sweets ranges from the sparkling simplicity of fruit jellies to the sophistication of creme de menthe, from the Eastern promise of Turkish delight, to cloud-like marshmallows.”

As always, some initial conjectures: Immediately obvious good words to use as inspiration here are: “Fruit”, “Jellies”, “Cloud”, and “Marshmallows”. I rejected the word “promise” back on Petition Damsel (actually, it was “pledge” — edit) and so maybe I should attempt to work that one in this time, somehow.

Other, less obvious but still potentially useful words might be “ranges” (if I wanted to do something boring with guns, or perhaps invent some sort of cooking game), or possibly “sophistication”; set up a game to be played at a fashionable dinner party.

But I’ll confess that right this minute, I’m most drawn by “cloud”. Maybe leaping from cloud to cloud, or soaring amongst the clouds, or being a cloud yourself.

Maybe you need to rain on someone.

Anyhow, that’s all the design consideration that I’m allowing myself today. Real gameplay designing starts tomorrow! :)