Knobs and Levers: A Game Development Philosophy

At Gutpunch Studios, we build games with knobs and levers.

This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a literal design principle: if a system has a variable, we give it a control. If there’s a number under the hood, we want a way to tweak it without recompiling, rewriting, or wrangling code. We call this approach Knobs and Levers, and it shapes the way we develop, prototype, balance, and ultimately play our games.

Where It Started

The idea was born out of necessity. On other development projects,, we found ourselves stuck in slow development loops, make a change, recompile, test, repeat. That workflow is fine when you’re a full-time engineer. It’s not ideal when you’re wearing multiple hats, paying by the hour for dev time, or just trying to see how a jump in your mvp should feel.

I am a non-technical founder, or at least a non-programming one. I was looking for a way to make impactful changes to my games design, while respecting the time and workflow of my genius programmer, Gleb.

Gleb is has always been willing to work through my tremendous scope creep (I call it vision) , but lives on the other side of the planet, making communication timing tricky on occassion.

So we asked a simple question: What if we didn’t have to change the code every time?
What if we could just adjust a knob? What if I could adjust our variables in real time?

What It Looks Like in Practice

Imagine building a platformer. Tuning something like a jump, its height, speed, gravity, acceleration curves, can be painful if every tweak requires a full build cycle. But with knobs and levers, those elements become sliders on a panel. Want to make the character jump higher? Slide it. Want less air control? Adjust the knob. Suddenly, iteration is instant.

This isn’t about shortcuts. It’s about making the tools work at the speed of thought. When you can experiment freely, you discover mechanics and feel that you wouldn’t reach through traditional trial and error. You find fun faster.

How It Evolved: The Numbuilder

We took this idea even further with Numbos, our endlessly customizable block-drop puzzle game. Instead of hardcoding difficulty curves or game modes, we exposed the entire ruleset to the front end via the Numbuilder.

• Want Numblocks to fall faster?
• Prefer a different gravity mode?
• Ready to tweak SRS Settings?
• Want your own announcer voice, color palette, or scoring system rules?
  

No problem. The knobs and levers are already there.

This system empowers players and designers alike to create, test, and iterate without touching code. It lets us crowdsource balance ideas, uncover new modes, and even stumble across accidental brilliance.

Why It Matters

Knobs and levers aren’t just for prototyping. They’re about making game design available to everyone..
They allow non-technical creators, like producers, designers, testers, even players, to meaningfully contribute to a game’s development and tuning along it’s lifecycle. They reduce bottlenecks. They save time. They make games better, faster.

Since adopting this philosophy, we’ve brought it into multiple projects, with consistently positive results. Gleb has brought it to multiple other projects he has worked on with other teams. Designers find it liberating. Developers find it efficient. Players find it empowering.

What’s Next

We’re continuing to expand the knobs-and-levers mindset across our future titles and internal tools. Whether it’s gameplay, audio, visual themes, or accessibility, the goal is the same: put control in the hands of the people who use it. Build smarter, iterate quicker, and leave room for play, in development and in the final game.

If you use an approach similar to this, we would love to hear from you, or if you would like to learn more about using knobs and levers as a concept in your game, we have the tenants here, or would love to talk to you about it. Hit us up on discord!