Why we ship small experiments
Puzzlehead has shipped nineteen things. Two of them are games. The other seventeen are the reason the two are any good.
An experiment here is a playable sketch: one mechanic, one room, no art, no menus, and a hard two-week cap. It goes to a handful of people, it gets a verdict, and then it either becomes a candidate or it goes on the shelf.
THE SHELF IS THE POINT
Nothing on the shelf is wasted. Blood Trials' chamber-memory system came from a 2024 experiment about a door that remembered being opened. Mala's guilty pause came from a discarded rhythm game. Neither would have survived being invented under deadline inside a real production.
Small experiments are how a two-game studio gets to have twenty games' worth of ideas.
THE ONLY RULE
An experiment must be playable by someone else. Not a document, not a video, not a description over a desk — a build. The gap between "this will be fun" and "this is fun" is the entire job, and it closes exactly once, when a stranger picks it up.
- #process
- #studio