Butterscotch Shenanigans

Crashlands: Design by Chaos

The development philosophy behind the action-crafting RPG Crashlands centers on a bottom-up, iterative approach that eschews traditional planning, game design documents, and long-term forecasting.

• Butterscotch Shenanigans achieved a 93 Metacritic score and over 500,000 units sold in the first year of Crashlands by prioritizing rapid, bottom-up iteration over rigid planning.
• The development process rejects traditional game design documents and long-term forecasting in favor of a brief, high-level directional anchor.
• The 'Goodenough' principle prioritizes immediate progress and player experience over perfection, which the studio credits with preventing crunch and burnout.