Derek Yu
Game designer; made Spelunky and Aquaria, and wrote the Boss Fight Books volume on Spelunky.
Derek Yu did not write this page. What is this?
It collects the places they publish and what they have said there, each linked to the source. They have no account here. Is this you? Claim it, correct it, or ask us to remove it from ppll.
Where they publish
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 9 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
The right way to size a project is by the size of the projects you have already finished, not by how skilled you are.
the best metric for scoping a project is not technical skill, but the scope of the previous games you've finished!
Indie Game Dev: Death Loops Said 14 Dec 2022
Get the whole work playable from beginning to end before polishing any part of it.
I find it best not to spend too long on any one part of the game until the entire game is playable from beginning to end.
Indie Game Dev: Death Loops Said 14 Dec 2022
Aiming to make an objectively great work is the wrong goal; make the best you can now and treat it as one of many.
My advice is to abandon the goal of making an objectively great game.
Indie Game Dev: Death Loops Said 14 Dec 2022
Show 6 more
Each project you finish makes the next one easier to finish and teaches you more about what a successful one takes.
"Finishing games gets easier with each game you finish, and the more games you finish, the better you will understand what it takes to make a successful game."
Indie Game Dev: Death Loops Said 14 Dec 2022
Finishing is a skill you get better at with practice, not a final step of the process.
If you treat finishing like a skill, rather than simply a step in the process, you can acknowledge not only that it’s something you can get better at, but also what habits and thought processes get in your way.
Finishing a Game Said 17 Sept 2010
A project has not started until something exists that can be played; plans, documents, teams and art are not a start.
Just remember: a damn game can be played, and if you have not created something that can be played, it’s not a damn game!
Finishing a Game Said 17 Sept 2010
Limited time and resources are what force a work to be tight and to feel like it has a purpose.
It’s our limited resources and time that forces us to make tight games that feel like they have a purpose.
Finishing a Game Said 17 Sept 2010
Every project reaches the point where the code is a mess, so starting over to fix that only returns you to the same place later.
This is true at some point during every game’s development. Your code will always be a mess.
Finishing a Game Said 17 Sept 2010
The last tenth of a project takes most of the work, because what is left at the end is all detail.
They say the last 10 percent is really 90 percent, and there is truth to this.
Finishing a Game Said 17 Sept 2010
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.