AlterLab GameForge -- Scope Check Workflow

Scope creep is the number one killer of indie games. Not lack of talent, not bad ideas, not engine limitations. Games die because they grow past the team's capacity to finish them. It happens one "small" addition at a time, each individually reasonable, collectively fatal. The danger is that scope creep feels like progress -- adding a feature feels productive, cutting feels like failure. This workflow exists to invert that psychology: cutting is the skill, and a tight scope is the achievement.

Team Cherry shipped Hollow Knight with 3 people. ConcernedApe shipped Stardew Valley alone. Neither project was small in ambition -- they were ruthlessly disciplined about what to include and what to cut. The games that ship are not the ones with the longest feature lists. They are the ones where every feature earned its place through honest scope accounting.

The core principle: a finished game with 8 great features beats an abandoned game with 20 half-built ones. This workflow enforces that principle with concrete tools, not wishful thinking.

Purpose & Triggers

Use this workflow when:

• The feature list has grown since the last scope check
• Someone says "can we fit this in?" or "what if we also added..."
• A milestone deadline is approaching and confidence is low
• The team feels overwhelmed but cannot articulate why
• Sprint velocity is consistently below planned capacity
• Any stakeholder (including yourself) pushes back on cutting features
• The project has never had a formal scope check