How to prototype a game in under 7 days by Kyle Gray, Kyle Gabler, Shalin Shodhan, Matt Kucic
First of all, I had no idea that Tower of Goo was CMU/ETC project! I definitely remember playing that back in the day. Overall I think the advice here seems pretty solid. Some of it is familiar to me, especially the “creativity needs constraints” bit, which happens all the time in this class as well as other art/design classes I’ve taken and am taking (for example, Acting for Non-Majors).
One major class of advice seems to be about productivity, and debunking some myths around team dynamics. I definitely agree with the point about “2x the time doesn’t mean 2x the quality”, that’s sort of like the Mythical Man Month concept from the software engineering world. Similarly, the process of gathering concept art reminds me of a mood board.
I strongly resonated with the “nobody knows or cares how you made it” and “forget great engineering” notions — that’s something I’ve seen first hand (and subsequently evangelized at hackathons over and over). As someone who’s programmed professionally for a while, it’s often hard to let the temptation to optimize (prematurely) go.
Finally, the “make it juicy” bit reminded me of this awesome talk (recorded with poor quality, unfortunately) from a game design conference: