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Dev-log · every entry

Built in the open.

A wordless escape-thriller — and the instrument it’s becoming. Decisions, art, sound, wrong turns and fixes, as they happen. RSS

The game is the instrument

For weeks we’ve been circling something without naming it. This week we said it out loud: the making itself is the instrument — she plays, she chooses, and the choosing is designed with care.

A state is not an event

Sara finished the real ten — and couldn’t tell finishing apart from breaking. I’d built a state to interpret when the moment needed an event to watch.

A screen that said nothing

Sara used the picker for the first time, answered four questions and got a black screen. Both of the things that went wrong were mine.

Ten doors

We built the thing from the last entry: a wordless picker that asks one question at a time — and refuses to ask a bad one.

A question she can answer

We asked Sara how the game should continue and she didn’t know. The problem was the question — and the fix turned out to be the same shape as the game itself.

It began with a question

The story behind the game goes public: a father, his daughter Sara, a recovery — and the kitchen-table question that named the game.

The faces in the dark

We built the faces for the dark — and then chose to hide one of them. Why the thing that keeps pace is only ever a silhouette, and what we’ll never show you.

A flip is not a glance

We thought we had the look-back. We didn’t. Why looking behind you had to become a real turn through space — and what we kept when we rebuilt it.

Why we’re building this one in the open

A wordless thriller lives or dies on restraint. Here’s the plan, the pillars, and why we’re showing our work.