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Devlog #6

Designing for calm, not clicks

5 min read · by Mira

A lot of modern games are engineered to be hard to stop playing. We're trying to do the opposite: make games that are lovely to start, and just as lovely to put down. Here are the five rules we design by.

1. No punishment for leaving

No daily streaks, no "your crops are dying", no energy timers. If you close the tab and come back in a month, nothing bad happened. A game should be a place you visit because you want to, not because you'll lose something if you don't.

2. Failure is cheap and friendly

In Cascade, a run lasts a couple of minutes and restarting is one tap. Low stakes keep the mood light — losing is a shrug and a smile, not a sigh.

If failing feels expensive, players get tense. If it's cheap, they get curious. We want curious.

3. Feedback that soothes

Soft colours, rounded shapes, gentle particles and a warm soundtrack. Every bit of juice is tuned to feel pleasant rather than urgent. Even the "game over" screen is meant to make you grin, not grimace.

4. Respect attention

No pop-ups begging you to rate us, no interstitial ads, no notifications. The game asks for exactly as much of your attention as you choose to give, and not a scrap more.

5. Small enough to finish

Short games get finished, and finishing feels good. We'd rather you complete a tiny thing and feel satisfied than bounce off a huge thing and feel guilty.

None of this makes us the biggest studio in the world. It does, we hope, make our corner of it a bit kinder.