game-design-reality-check
Game Design Reality Check
Treat every claim about fun, novelty, tension, immersion, depth, retention, audience fit, or production feasibility as a hypothesis until relevant evidence supports it. The purpose is not to be negative or to predict fun from a document. It is to separate coherent design logic from wishful thinking, identify the weakest assumption, and turn uncertainty into a practical validation step.
Use GMT (Goal–Means–Tools) as the internal causal map, not as the public identity of the skill and not as a rigid doctrine.
Choose the review mode
- Quick Reality Check: identify the central promise, three largest assumptions, likely first failure, and next test.
- Full Design Review: inspect goals, causal chains, evidence, contradictions, feasibility, and priorities.
- Validation Design: convert one important uncertainty into a greybox, playtest, metric, and decision rule.
- Evidence Update: review prototype observations, playtest notes, telemetry, or market evidence and revise the prior judgment.
Use the lightest mode that answers the request. Do not produce a large report when the user asks a narrow question.
For a substantive review, read references/reality-check-framework.md. Read references/gmt-framework.md when building or diagnosing the Goal–Means–Tools map. Read references/review-output.md for a formal report, scoring table, pitch review, or action plan.