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cmd-official.bsky.social
@cmd-official.bsky.social
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Reposted
pentadact.com
I've been running an indie games studio for 15 years now, and it felt like a good time to boil down what I've learned into 4 pieces of advice:

www.pentadact.com/2026-01-08-1...

I hope it's of use, not least because goddamn I forgot how long blog posts take to write.
A timeline visually representing the advice from my post, emphasising how dramatically and reliably having more time, with a testable build, converts to your game being better and your studio being safer.
January 8, 2026 at 6:02 PM
Reposted
brunodias.bsky.social
Game design as a discipline stems from the premise that you know what the player "wants" better than the player does, at least some of the time, in the sense that you must be opinionated about what the experience of the game is... that's what game design is. That's the job.
sketchylogic.bsky.social Darya Noghani (𐎭𐎼𐎹) @sketchylogic.bsky.social · 17d
If you asked a nation of games developers whether it's rude to "assume you understand what the player wants more than the player does", you would spark a civil war.
Text from the documentation of Ren'Py, a games engine. It reads: "Hard. When True, Ren'Py may prevent the user from clicking to interrupt the pause. If the player enables skipping, the hard pause will be skipped. There may be other circumstances where the hard pause ends early or prevents Ren'Py from operating properly, these will not be treated as bugs. In general, using hard pauses is rude. When the user clicks to advance the game, it's an explicit request - the user wishes the game to advance. To override that request is to assume you understand what the player wants more than the player does. tl;dr - Don't use renpy.pause with hard=True."
January 4, 2026 at 5:19 PM