Subtract Until the Baggage Is Gone
Keep halving the product until you find the version you were complicating for no reason.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
Poetry for Neanderthals took about a year to find, and the entire year was subtraction. The input was a strong premise — communicate using only single-syllable words — wrapped in an exhausting format. The mechanism was repeated halving of both the unit of work and the timer while watching which direction the results improved. The output was a game whose entire rule fits in one sentence, which Lee shipped within weeks of the realisation.
Origin
Jacob and Francesca pitched Lee at OR Camp in Chicago, an invite-only conference of about a hundred people where Lee, a self-described crazy introvert, decided to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Their concept was translating whole sentences into monosyllabic words. Lee did not think it was a good game, but he thought the loop was genuinely interesting, and spent a year cutting it down with Brian Spence and Matt Inman.
Core principles
- 01When feedback says cumbersome, hard and too long, the mechanism may still be sound — the packaging around it is what is wrong.
- 02Reduce in aggressive halves rather than trims, and keep reducing past the point that feels reasonable.
- 03Watch the direction of the results, not just the absolute score: better results with fewer demands per turn tells you which way to keep cutting.
- 04The real breakthrough arrives as a question about your own assumptions — why are we complicating this?
- 05Most complexity is baggage carried forward from the original pitch rather than anything the mechanism required.
- 06Users will simultaneously ask for less work per turn and more turns; give them the first and the second takes care of itself.
- 07Simplification is what makes a product cheap to explain, which is what makes it travel.
How to run it
- 1
Separate the loop from the format
Lee's judgment on the first pitch was explicit: not a fun game, but a really interesting core gameplay loop. Deciding which layer is broken is what makes a year of iteration worth funding.
Pro tip Write both verdicts down separately so you do not kill a good mechanism because of a bad format.
- 2
Get brutal early feedback from real households
The team sent very half-baked prototypes to the Kitty Test Pilots, a group of families who had asked to hear about new games and instead got asked to test unfinished ones.
Pro tip Lee says this asset took roughly seven years to build; start assembling your testers long before you need them.
Watch out Half-baked means half-baked — sending polished prototypes teaches you nothing about the mechanism.
- 3
Halve the workload and the clock together
Sentences went to five or six words, then three, then two. The timer went from open-ended to two minutes, then one, and the shipped version sits around forty-five seconds.
Pro tip Track the trend line, not the verdict: results kept improving as the per-turn workload fell.
Watch out Feedback will say they want more time. That is usually a request for more turns, not longer turns.
- 4
Ask why you are complicating this
The breakthrough was a question rather than an experiment. If two words are still too much, what if the entire game were one word — get your friend to say this word using only single-syllable words?
Watch out The extreme version usually feels embarrassingly small right before it turns out to be correct.
- 5
Add back only what enhances the loop
With the loop settled, the team added deliberately stumble-inducing words like teeth, plus a punishment — the inflatable no-stick club — because laughs were setting up jokes whose punchline never came.
Pro tip Matt Inman's contribution was pure format instinct: it is a caveman game, so give them a club.
Watch out Legal will fight you. Lee's team was told to instruct players to hit softly and shipped softish as a compromise.
In the wild
The original pitch asked players to translate whole sentences into monosyllabic words — Lee's demo was rendering a paragraph about a dragon at the store as me want to go get food. Testers reported it was cumbersome, too hard, that turns took eight minutes and there was not enough time. The team cut sentences to five or six words, then three, then two, and each time it was still too much, until they asked why they were complicating it at all and reduced the game to a single word per card.
→ Once the baggage was gone the game became really simple and really fun, and Matt Inman named it Poetry for Neanderthals on sight.
During testing the team noticed that everybody laughed when a player accidentally used a word with more than one syllable, but then the moment just ended — Lee describes it as setting up for a joke where the punchline never arrived. Options included a buzzer or a shouted word, but Matt Inman's read was that a caveman game should give players a club and let them bonk each other over the head.
→ The inflatable no-stick became a defining component, and the lawyers' demand for a warning to hit softly was shipped as softish.
Common mistakes
Trimming instead of halving
Going from six words to five would have told the team nothing. The signal only became legible because each cut was aggressive enough to move the experience, which is what let them read the direction of improvement.
Taking the literal feature request
Testers explicitly asked for more time. Giving them more time would have preserved the exhausting format; what they actually wanted was more turns, which only a smaller unit of work could deliver.
Never questioning the inherited premise
The sentence-translation structure came from the original pitch and survived a year unexamined. Lee's summary is that once they realised they were bringing baggage through for no reason, the game got really simple really fast.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product teams sitting on a mechanism that testers say is interesting but exhausting to actually use.
Not ideal for
Products whose value genuinely comes from depth and duration, such as long-form strategy games or campaign-based experiences.
From the transcript
“we took the sentences down to like five or six words still too much we took them down to three words still too much took…”
“once we realized that we were bringing baggage through for no reason the game got really simple really fun”
“we started to realize like i'm getting better and better results the fewer words they have to do at once but they want more time…”
From the episode
#653: Elan Lee, Co-Creator of Exploding Kittens — How to Raise Millions on Kickstarter, Deconstructing Mega-Successes, Secrets of Game Design, The Power of Positive Constraints, The Delights of Craftsmanship, and The Art of Turning Fans into Superfans