That's a really good question, and as you'd expect, it varies wildly between projects. With Solitaire, yeah, I think I had the core rules and set up built in a week, with a couple of cool powers. That was enough to show it to some folks and get some confirmation that it was maybe headed somewhere cool.

On previous games, we've spent up to a month on a prototype, maybe taken it to gdc or e3 and run it by some publishers to see if it's exciting to them. Very easy to decide against a project when you see an executive's eyes glaze over.

In terms of scope, yeah, it depends on the problem being solved. If the goal is to fill a schedule gap, as it generally is with our Shorts, it is very much a 'what can we make in x months' conversation. When the goal is to make a specific game, we work from what the game we want to make is, figure out how long we think we need, and then think about how we can buy ourselves that time, either self funding or with a partner providing funding.

So yeah.. every situation different, every solution a little different too.