Combining Breakout: What We Built
The Breakout game we built. The games recombined from the same pieces. The real code, the real numbers, and the answer to one question: did the cost of change go down?
Free workshop. Open to everyone.
The Breakout game we built. The games recombined from the same pieces. The real code, the real numbers, and the answer to one question: did the cost of change go down?
Free workshop. Open to everyone.
Most design methods promise to reduce complexity. Few put that claim under measurement. Over eight sessions of the Combining Breakout course, we built a complete game using Combinant® Design — then recombined the same pieces into different games without rewriting each feature from scratch.
This session shows what happened. Not theory. Not benchmarks. The actual products, the actual code, the actual numbers. Then we go further: live with the audience, we take the objects we built and test how far they can be recombined into something new, in a different domain.
We walk through the products we built and the games we recombined. We open the codebase and show how the pieces combine. We show the metrics dashboard: effort per feature, cost per change, recombination ratio, and the shape of the curve.
Then we take the existing objects and try to build a new product live with the audience: a new game or something in a different domain. How far do the pieces stretch? How many new ones do we need? The answer tells you more than any slide.
You write software for a living. You want to see real metrics from a real project — not promises, not philosophy. Or you just want to see what Combinant® Design actually produces. You don't need to have attended the course or the first workshop. This session stands on its own.
You will see a complete codebase where behavior is built through combination and recombination. You will see the metrics that track whether the cost of change actually declined. You will see the design decisions that shaped the curve — what worked, what didn't, what surprised us. And you will see a live recombination attempt that tests whether the pieces built for a game can work in a different domain. That's the real test of recombinability.
This is the closing workshop of Combining Breakout — the first product in the Decreasing Cost Challenge. Three products, three different domains — all built with Combinant® Design to test one question: can this method actually reduce the cost of change?
Next in the Challenge: → Combining MiniVi → Combining Trading Alerts
Prerequisites: None. Open to everyone.
Free online workshop
Duration: 2.5 hours
The Products
What we built, how the games play, and what was recombined from the same pieces.
The Numbers
Effort per feature, cost per change, recombination ratio, and the shape of the curve.
The Code
How the codebase is structured. How behavioural IFs are avoided. How the pieces compose.
The Design Decisions
What shaped the curve. What worked, what didn't, and what surprised us.
Live Recombination
We take the existing objects and try to build something new — live, with the audience. A different game. A different domain. How far do the pieces go?
Q&A with Cohort Participants
heir experience, their observations, and what held up in practice.
Francesco Cirillo. Creator of the Pomodoro® Technique. Senior software designer, Extreme Programming pioneer. Decades of software design led to one question: how do you reduce the cost of change? Combinant® Design is his answer.
Build a text editor by applying Combinant® Design