Players do not leave because your map is ugly. They leave because they do not know what to do.

The maps that hold sessions have three things in the first 30 seconds:

1. A visible goal. Not a tutorial wall of text. Something they can run toward.

2. One verb that feels good immediately. Jump, claim, fight, build. Pick one.

3. A reason to come back to the same square. A loop, not a hallway.

If you are commissioning a map, write those three lines before you send references. The builder can then spend budget on retention instead of guessing the fantasy.

That is how we scope every small map we take.

Making my parents retired #day1