Difficulty is a conversation

A good game tells you what it expects and listens to how you answer.

I keep a small notebook of what a game asks of me in the first ten minutes. It predicts, almost perfectly, whether I will still be playing in ten days.

Difficulty is not a number. It is how a game responds when you fail, and whether that response feels like a conversation.

Pay attention, then count.

What I would tell my past self

The best loops are tiny: try, fail, notice one thing, try again. Everything else is decoration.

I would rather finish a small game than admire a large one.

Related notes: Forty hours in one roguelike, Why small games stick.