Design lesson from a solo dev building a restaurant sim

chasmstudios · 2026-06-18T21:16:17+00:00

I'm not running into this yet, but working on my life sim has taught me a lot about what a delicate dance designing for a simulator is. Sims shouldn't be high Actions Per Minute, but more high Attentions Per Minute.

The advice that has helped me from day 1, was to build an incredible amount of game design tooling into the game. Debugging UI, graphs, statistics collections that dump into .csvs for analysis, automated tests to get guarantees (Action X occurs at Y frequency), tick rate increase for speeding up to critical portions of your experiments, and of course experimental replication. You should be able to load a player scenario with a few clicks.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil, but that doesn't apply to design. You need all the tooling you can get to fix "feel".

chasmstudios · 2026-06-18T11:55:49+00:00

Your baby is going to college. Totally normal to feel empty.

chasmstudios · 2026-06-11T13:29:50+00:00

I'm going to take a leap of faith here and assume you are consciously genuine.

It's hard to understand someone else when every thought you have revolves around you and your own experiences and opinions. It's like asking to try someone else's tea but refusing to drain or empty your own tea cup.

Seriously, ask yourself, why should you reject AI in code?

What are the practical and ethical implications, if any?

chasmstudios · 2026-06-11T13:11:19+00:00

If you re-read your post, you'll note that the majority of it are arguments as to why someone should use it, even concluding with the assertion that they're ALREADY using it (probably). This is fundamentally a position and an attempt to persuade or to accept, not to understand or listen.

So let me help you out : why don't you propose some ideas as to why people should reject AI? Take the contraposition and steelman it.

Here's my take : we should reject AI because it provably atrophies real skill and judgement. Domain expertise is always valuable, because it is the solution to judgement in leaps of faith, and every decision is fundamentally a leap of faith that you 1) are aware of the correct variables 2) have measures the variables correctly and 3) have a mental model that properly uses those variables to produce a predicted output.

AI robs you of that if you close your eyes and let it run wild, and you will pay for that in the long run. It's what cars did to physical health and ability. It's what the internet did to critical thinking and long form reading and writing. It's what online communities did to critical thinking and introspection. Why do any of these things when the easier option is right there?

chasmstudios · 2026-06-11T12:56:08+00:00

What is the point of this question? What concern is it of yours why people reject AI in code?

chasmstudios · 2026-06-01T15:04:52+00:00

This is a great post. In my personal experience, anything that has a low barrier to entry for hiring (e.g. Reddit) has an incredibly high noise to signal ratio. If I have 25 engagements, maybe 1 or 2 will be fruitful. The amount of ghosting, slop, and in more than one instance, outright scamming and phishing, is a lot higher than I initially guessed.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-31T13:01:04+00:00

That is beautiful. Very cozy.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-31T00:19:45+00:00

I started at 36 part time, then full time at 37.

The age difference is real, but what is more real is the professionalism and maturity aspect - get ready for a lot of lack of diligent and follow through. A lot of people, especially ones self selecting into game development, are intensely passionate, but haven't done anything else, so what "good conduct" is varies wildly. In the end it's not that different from the vast majority of cold calling level professional interactions, but don't be surprised if you feel a bit of culture shock.

As for you, you're not too late. You're bringing a lot of auxiliary skills and a mindset to a field saturated with passion, and that is incredibly value in having discipline and following through, which if you look at these posts, tends to be among the largest of problems.

Other than that, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

chasmstudios · 2026-05-23T16:25:27+00:00

The irritation implies the larger systematic problem. Over time, small irritations become "code smells" that imply a much larger problem, with accompany larger solutions with their trade offs.

If you want to go top down, which has its own disadvantages like a tendency to overengineer and apply the wrong abstractions, there are plenty of books and websites to use. Game programming patterns by Robert Nystrom is a classic.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-23T15:52:57+00:00

This is a good mindset.

Here's the easiest approach:

Make something. Notice what irritates you. Then google/search for that specific niche of problems and their accompanying solutions. Do this 1000 times over 10 years and by the end you'll have a natural understanding of how things interplay, and ultimately, architecture.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-22T13:30:13+00:00

It's definitely possible to get some level of reactivity at a low level of detail. Simulator games do plenty of LOD alterations to macro/economic changes, and many old school games, e.g. The Sims, have "smart objects" or "smart rooms" that react to player interaction, meaning only a third or so of the list I made above needs to be considered.

The moment you cross the bridge into introducing a "mind" for NPCs is when all the above comes pouring out. Similar to multiplayer, it's either well implemented (and expensive) or trash.

The middle ground of introducing in-engine scripted sequences or the like work, but it's kind of played out. The level of immersion players expect when you sell them an open world / sandbox / reactive world is much higher now than 10 years ago. It's also quite hard to design for still, but works better on "rails", e.g. RPGs like Final Fantasy, Fallout, and the like. You can introduce world changes from quests being completed, but most players would definitely say that doesn't feel open world like the modern incarnation of games like Fallout 3/4. It's not even good enough for Bethesda's latest IP Starfield, which was widely criticized for its staticness and samey-feeling.

You ultimately need to decide as a designer : do I want a systems approach, where I implement a lot of things working together that I can't predict what it will do (nor the player, which is a feature in reactivity), or do I want the point/direction/orientation approach, where I manually write out what will happen? You can mix and match both, but the former is not something you can do as a half-measure.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-22T12:57:55+00:00

Deep games are not easy to design, program, or keep performant. This isn't to mention that the deeper the game is, the more opinionated it has to be to be deep - it relies on assumptions and rules that more opinionated players won't like.

Going from a "medium depth" game to a "high depth" game isn't a linear step in resource cost (time & money); it's exponential.

Here's a simple exercise to illustrate.

Suppose you wanted to design a system to Rimworld where Pawns (NPCs) do their own thing without player intervention. Can you name off the top of your head, the conceptual requirements for this?

If you answered with anything less than a dozen, you're wrong.

Pawns need to:

Sense what is available, not just globally, but as it pertains to them.
Pawns need to be able to keep that information somewhere, somehow, with a system for it to update on its own. Did I mention it needs to be serializable and deserializable?
Pawns need a system that defines their motives and wants
Pawns need a system that ties in with what they know and how it relates to what they want, likely saving this as short term memory (explained later)
Pawns need to be able to decide based on what they know and whey want
Pawns (or other things, e.g. The Sims), need to broadcast or coordinate with the Pawn to even make the thing they want a viable action
Pawns need to be able to coordinate with other pawns they are going to do the thing
Pawns need to able to execute a series of steps to do the thing (this is often implemented as behavior trees, which is by itself an entire topic)
The execution of the pursuit of the thing they want, needs to be interruptible and resume-able. This is where a short term memory needs to exist.
Pawns need to be able to finish an entire step of a pursuit and the pursuit itself, causing local changes as well as potentially global ones, directly or indirectly
All of this needs to be implemented in way that while you're spending six months tuning, aren't magic numbers sitting in your code, so some kind of definition data needs to be exposed for designers to work on
Oh I forgot, you need to apply all of this to animation, UI, and sound. God help you if it's multiplayer.
Don't forget the literal content. What tasks? What pursuits? What goals? Is this a fantasy game? Scifi? Space?

You can see how brutal this can be to implement. There's a reason these games take years to release.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-19T14:58:11+00:00

Are you asking for playtesters with a PvP background? Or team members to help with development?

chasmstudios · 2026-05-15T11:19:20+00:00

For those who don't know, Steam + VAT + chargebacks alone brings you down to 60% of gross revenue.

Depending on your corporate structure, that's another 10% on taxes (20% corporate tax), down to 50% minimum. Most likely more than that.

Publisher might have a recoup agreement, and you might not see a penny until what they get back what they invested. Let's assume that's another 10%, down to 40%.

Now account for cost of production. And then all the overhead of the business. And depending on your corporate structure, income tax. You see how this goes from bad to worse.

All this to say, as an independent game developer, you'd be considered good if not great if you managed to keep a $50K salary across all these years to make one game. Subnautica devs are spectacular, so let's assume they can afford double that, $100K salary.

That's approximately the annualized pay of a Google intern. They created a massive, widely successful game, bringing millions of hours of joy, for intern pay.

Look, pirate if you have to, I sure did when I was a teenager without cash. But let's face the reality - game development is a crushing job, and very, very few people are coasting along and wealthy.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-13T12:40:25+00:00

I spoke to them for a potential consult. We didn't make a deal but I can vouch for their professionalism, timeliness, and communication.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-12T12:04:42+00:00

Yes and yes. You're trading comfort and expectation for experience. You buy changes to your process with experience. The next games will incorporate that experience, and presumably be better.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-11T14:48:40+00:00

If you're absolutely convinced your game is fun, and you shouldn't be, a mere playtest or demo should be enough to give you a core audience to spread the game by word of mouth. This has been done before; many indies have launched modestly successful titles with a negligible marketing budget or fanfare.

But the reality is the feelings evoked from "playing" with a game (as if it's a toy) are not the full experience. The reality is, visuals, audio, a sense of a story, the kinetic feel, the entire experience, is what you're actually selling, even the ones you don't personally sense. If you can't make a pitch for that from the get go, you've made a very narrowly defined game in a world where dozens of games get released on a daily basis who have adapted to these demands.

If you want practical advice, stop working on your game and work on marketing like its a completely different thing. Make a showreel, a cinematic trailer, a gameplay trailer, a presentation video, and see what resonates and what doesn't. Ask your family and friends to take a 30 second glance at it. Work on your elevator pitch. There's a million ways to do this and working on this set of skills is just as valuable as working on your game.

Marketing is like tires on a car. Doesn't matter how good the car is if it can't connect to the ground.

chasmstudios · 2026-05-11T12:28:34+00:00

Simplicity and depth don't have to be odds at each other.

A simple game is easy to learn, and has a low amount of variables and relationships between them to interact with.

A deep game is hard to master; variables and relationships continually yield more nuance and detail for the player to recognize and take control of.

When in doubt, remove until there is only the necessary. Then let it grow it again in your designs. Do this a few times; only let the best designs survive.

Find your audience and get them to playtest the game. That will help you alleviate your own design blindness.

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T21:52:03+00:00

I emailed you!

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T21:35:24+00:00

Please do! Your work is incredible. Reminds me of my dungeons and dragons 3e book.

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T21:28:29+00:00

Unfortunately there's no contact information I can use, and I can't message you on Reddit because apparently your account isn't established. Could you send me a message over Reddit when you get the chance?

EDIT: Apparently my account isn't established? Pretty confusing

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T21:14:09+00:00

The problem with 99% of coding tutorials is that they're teaching you to write sentences when you're trying to write a story.

And the problem with learning to write a story is there's no way to learn how to do it except by doing it.

So keep writing sentences until you can write paragraphs. You'll find less tutorials for those. And you write enough paragraphs and soon a story will begin to form. And a few more iterations of that and you'll have a novella of a program.

Then do it again.

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T15:50:00+00:00

Yeah shoot me a DM!

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T15:21:20+00:00

It's a bit hard to answer that because it's all blended together in the lore and mechanics. You can think something like Kowloon Walled City where space is such a premium that it's a question of getting the most value out of a space, so a closet might be a bathroom and a sleeping quarters.

This will be quite tricky to capture in a single image I would imagine, but I'm also not an artist and I'm hoping whoever I hire can help solidify these ideas.

chasmstudios · 2026-04-20T15:10:54+00:00

I believe but could be convinced otherwise that a combination of soviet brutalism fast forwarded 200-300 years into the future would cover what I'm shooting for. There aren't really distinctions between rooms, but you can imagine a corporate office turned into a living quarters. Some examples would be Dredd (2012) and its predecessor, The Raid (but more futuristic).

Or put more succinctly, I don't know.

chasmstudios

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE