vertical-slice

name	Vertical Slice
description	Build the smallest complete piece of the real game, so what is proved is the game rather than the pitch.
category	Production

Vertical Slice

One part of the game, at shipping quality, running in the real build. The point is that it cannot lie: a slice proves the game exists in a way no document or trailer can.

When to use

• The studio needs to show the game to somebody who will decide something.
• A design is being argued about in the abstract and has been for a while.

Steps

1. Pick the piece that is most likely to be wrong, not the one that is easiest to finish. A slice built from the safe parts proves the safe parts.
2. Take it to shipping quality. Art, audio, feel, and the failure states. A slice with placeholder feedback is a prototype with a longer schedule.
3. Use the real build. A bespoke demo scene proves the demo scene, and every integration problem it avoids is one that arrives later at full price.
4. Check features.depends_on. Slices are where seams between systems surface, which is most of their value.
5. Play it with people who have not seen it, and record what they did on playtests with the build named.
6. Update features.playable with what the slice actually shows, honestly — this is the moment the feature list gets corrected.

Output

A playable slice in the real build, playtests rows from people outside the studio, and a corrected feature list. Anything shown outside the studio is the operator's call.