Gameplay must always be evolving, rather than waiting for art. Also, Cruz notes, We share every build with the publisher, even our crappy ones. Because we share everything and keep things public we try and keep our builds consistent in quality. It requires some publisher education, says Cruz, but pays off. You have to find the right publisher, as well. They're used to seeing shiny things. Because we are working virtual we have to make sure everybody can put their work in the build without bothering anybody else, says Cruz.

The company uses a MS Excel spreadsheet with all assets and gameplay elements tracked which exports to the build, automatically, without programmer assistance.Keep Things Ugly At the end of the day everybody puts their work in the game. The problem with that is that not everything takes a day to build, says Cruz. Not everything can be done in a day, especially if you want it to be pretty. Our trick is to keep things ugly as possible, until the last possible second. We use a lot of placeholders and I mean a lot of really crappy looking placeholders.

According to Cruz, this approach lessens wait time and dependency, for all disciplines. At the prototype milestone, the entire game is playable in a terrible looking form, sure, but it can be completed. It's only when we're happy with how the game plays in black and white that we move into rough playable, says Cruz. You'd be surprised how much you can find the fun. We're not about being shiny, we're about being fun.

Cruz says that artists have the biggest problem with this working methodology but the rest of the team just encourages them to dump in art as soon as they can. When the publisher says the puzzles make sense, and maybe they're okay, that's when you go into something remotely pretty, says Cruz. All of that, really, is to reduce the cost of change, so we can scrap any feature until the game is fun. Designers, of all disciplines have major guilt issues with cost, says Cruz.

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