Jeiel Aranal

(A tip if you're going to give this a go: something that came up when we were doing this work was differentiating between what we ended up calling the "possibility space" and the core behaviour.

***This diagram is not supposed to chart all the things that are possible, but the things you feel are important. ***

Finding where that distinction was and being disciplined about it was a crucial part of the work.

You could really get in the weeds in a game like ours with all the things that are possible, and it's important to know where that line is.

Try and keep it for core behaviour that the player needs to do throughout the game, not just "can pick up stick, can wave it, can stick it in tailpipe" that kind of thing. Otherwise it becomes too overwhelming! Identify the line early and it is much easier to do)

can vouch, i ended up doing this as part of a rework of one of our core loops (after seeing leena share it on twitter) and it really helped a lot. the biggest way it helped immediately was identifying which things actually connected to each other and if you're relying too much (or too little!) on any given noun

This seems like a good way to get a grasp on the core interactions of your game, I'll have to try it next time!

that is a pretty flowchart. i know someone who is obsessed with flowcharts. can i steal this for non game dev reasons?

this is a really interesting way of thinking about how to build out processes

This highlights the fact that I still approach games from too much of a film-making perspective. This gamedev baby has some headspace to shift.