The summary.
CONSISTENT SIMPLE ART LOOKS INTENTIONAL; INCONSISTENT GOOD ART LOOKS BROKEN
Which is why a limited palette and an achievable style matter more than fidelity, especially for small teams.
Test assets together in the game, under real lighting — they look different in isolation.
SET POLYGON AND TEXTURE BUDGETS BEFORE PRODUCTION
Reducing detail afterwards is expensive and lossy. And validate assets automatically, rejecting failures rather than warning — warnings are ignored.
THE TIME FROM CONTENT CHANGE TO SEEING IT IN THE GAME IS THE FIGURE THAT GOVERNS PRODUCTION SPEED
Measure it, and invest in reducing it. Debug visualisation is what makes invisible bugs diagnosable.
GENERATION IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR DESIGN
Generated content lacks intent and players detect it. Assemble authored pieces, constrain by design intent, and always seed reproducibly.
KEEP GAME DATA OUT OF CODE AND VALIDATE ITS REFERENCES
A broken reference in data crashes the game at an arbitrary moment. Use stable identifiers with display names separate.
GAME TEXT IS READ IN FRAGMENTS, UNDER PRESSURE
Brevity and clarity above style, effect before flavour, and one word per concept throughout.
