Game Production

Game Production

Turn an accepted direction into playable progress, one build at a time. A milestone is a product hypothesis with a playable build, not a task list: plan the smallest build that retires the biggest uncertainty, implement it without drifting from the brief, and verify it in play before claiming it.

If direction is missing, weak, or disputed, route through game-direction when available or return USER_DECISION_NEEDED with the smallest decision required. Do not use a production assumption to choose the concept, player promise, stage, or public scope. Safe assumptions are limited to reversible production details inside already accepted intent.

Route By Request

Game Studio Milestone Ladder

Projects earn stages through played evidence, in roughly this order: first prototype (answers one named question) → first playable build (one action, one visible consequence) → core loop (repeatable with readable success, failure, and recovery) → presentation build (the chosen format earns its cost) → vertical slice (short section at representative shipped quality) → demo → release. Skipping is fine only when the skipped build already exists. Never call a prototype a vertical slice, and never let a stage advance on prose alone. This milestone ladder complements rather than replaces lifecycle labels such as alpha, beta, and release candidate.

Planning

Read references/milestone-planning.md for the planning flow, red flags, and output shape. The non-negotiables:

• every milestone names its hypothesis, smallest useful build, cut candidates, and fallback build;
• a milestone that only succeeds if everything works is a plan to fail;
• public promises must match the current build, not the roadmap.

Implementation

• Preserve design intent: before claiming player-facing work complete, name which player action and feedback changed, which pillar the change preserves, and which playable check showed the intended behavior.
• Parallel implementation is an optimization, not a requirement. When you do split work, give each stream disjoint write scopes and a handoff; review may cross boundaries, editing may not. Sequential execution is always valid.
• For Godot projects, read references/godot-playable-build.md before build or milestone work, and references/godot-reference-patterns.md before implementing a mechanic that matches a known demo or starter-kit pattern.
• For browser games — Three.js, Babylon, Phaser, PixiJS, or hand-written canvas and WebGL — read references/web-playable-build.md. The browser makes verification and distribution cheap and supplies no engine, so a camera rig, save system, or audio bus is a milestone with its own playable build, not setup work folded into another task.
• When a build ships to players, read references/release-ledger.md before changing a version number or writing release notes.

Long Runs

For long autonomous sessions, read references/long-run-control.md. The core guard: activity is not progress. Classify material checkpoints as playable, evidence, support, or blocked. Two consecutive support-only checkpoints trigger a re-anchor before more support work; prefer the next playable change, real play check, or blocker report.

Grounded Claims

Before reporting progress or completion, audit each claim against a check you actually ran in this session — a launched build, an executed command, an inspected artifact. If tests fail or a check was skipped, say so plainly. File changes and passing scripts are not playable build by themselves.

Authority

Within an accepted brief and milestone, an implementation request authorizes reversible local edits, refactors, placeholder cuts, and non-destructive checks; record assumptions with their reversal cost. The human owns direction changes, stage advancement, public promises, and release scope: when the next step would change any of those, stop and return USER_DECISION_NEEDED with the exact decision required. Destructive or irreversible actions, external writes or uploads, spend-bearing actions, secret handling, and material scope expansion need explicit approval. Create commits, branches, tags, or pushes only when the user requests them.

Output

End a production pass with:

Mode: plan | implement | long-run
Active milestone or build:
Player-visible change or planned change:
Artifacts changed:
Evidence checked and result:
Evidence state: planned | checked | failed | blocked
Checks failed, skipped, or unverified:
Safe assumptions and cuts:
Blocker:
Human decision needed:
Next build:

Completion means the active claim is supported by current evidence. It does not advance the project stage or expand a public promise.

Gotchas

• Do not hide the evidence inside implementation details; the milestone claim must be player-facing and checkable.
• Do not expand the release promise during implementation, and do not let implementation silently change direction.
• Do not claim a playable build from file presence alone; run the narrowest real check (launch, scene load, smoke run, capture) that supports the claim.
• Do not copy a starter kit or demo blindly; name the pattern, the adaptation, the license decision, and the runtime check.
• Do not keep generating documents, tests, or helper tooling when the next thing that must happen is a playable change, a human taste call, or an outside decision.