We have a document called "Later". It's the longest thing we've written all year, and we're not allowed to open it on weekdays.
It's the list of everything we want to improve once there's money behind us. Effects, mostly. The kind of polish that turns "works" into "feels great". Every one of us has added to it, usually late in the evening, usually after playing the build and wincing at something small. A light that should bloom. A moment that should have more weight to it. A transition that's fine, and only fine.
The decision to wait was a good one. I still believe that. Spending months polishing before anyone has agreed to back us would be a very expensive way to find out we polished the wrong things. A publisher might want something different. They might love the part we'd have ignored. Polish is a bet, and we'd rather place it with someone else's money.
Knowing that doesn't stop it itching, though. This week we played the demo straight through for the first time in a while, with fresh eyes, and I could feel every item on the list pulling at my sleeve. I opened a scene, changed one tiny thing, and then closed it again without saving. That's about as dramatic as discipline gets in a studio of our size.
What's helped is giving the list a different job. It isn't a pile of regrets. It's evidence that we know exactly where the gaps are, and that we've thought about them properly, in order, with rough costs attached. When we talk to anyone with a cheque book, that's a better answer than "it'll be prettier eventually". We can point at a page and say: this is what your money does.
The harder part is the team. Nobody joined a studio to leave things unfinished, and holding back is a quiet kind of frustration that doesn't show up in any meeting. We've started saying it out loud at stand-up. "That one's on Later." It sounds silly, but it makes it feel like a decision and not a failure.
It's a strange form of patience. We built the thing, and now we have to let it sit there looking a bit plain, trusting that someone will see past it.
— Thiago, hands firmly in pockets
Posted by Thiago Moreira · October 1, 2026
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