4. Careful with procedural noise. Fog, grass, film grain, and so on. It ruins video quality for streamers and YouTubers on low bitrate. Turn it down if you want them to share your game. I learned this the hard way from a streamer's feedback.

The game:
store.steampowered.com/app/4845040/...

2. Basic color grading goes a long way. Light color, light strength, ambient light, and a simple color grade shader already do a lot. They set the tone of the whole game.

3. Glitters! Fireflies, embers, campfires, sparks, birds. Almost no performance cost, and the world feels alive.

As a book lover, I'd like to think this is my small contribution to the book culture.

- The scope of a narrative game like this is much easier to control, compared to. e.g. a strategy game.
- The core game loop feels finished. Once the system is in place, expanding is easy. e.g. how big to go, what kind of stories to tell, it's all flexible.

It's a small horror game I jammed out in a week. As someone who'd never played this kind of game before, making one felt surprisingly fresh.

v.s. what the player see

store.steampowered.com/app/4845040/...

Their 2022 talk on music and sound design is also really substantial.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oBJ...

... but after watching their 2024 GDC talk, I felt like I could chew on those 40 minutes for three days straight.

gdcvault.com/play/1034422...