What a vertical slice is (and how I scope one for my own games)

Yuval Eizik — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:27:51 +0000

A vertical slice is one small part of your game built to the quality of the finished game: gameplay, art, sound, UI and the way a new player starts it, all working together. Everything else stays unbuilt. It answers one question: can you actually make this game at the quality you have in mind, and how long does it take?

I make Tingbase, a 3v3 hero shooter, in Unity 6 and C# (Steam app 4086630), and I’m building my second game, Mini Games Arena (Steam app 5080600), in Unity too. Below is how I think about a slice for both of them.

Prototype, slice or demo

	Prototype / grey box	Vertical slice	Demo
Question it answers	Is it fun?	Can we make this at final quality?	Will players want more?
Quality	Rough on purpose	Near-final in every layer	Polished where players look
Who it is for	You and a few testers	You, your team, a publisher	Players and press
What you learn	Whether to keep the idea	What finished content costs	How people react

A prototype comes first. If the core of the game is not fun in grey boxes, final art will not save it. The slice comes after, once you know what you are building.

What a slice looks like in Tingbase

Tingbase is built around one idea: you switch between Tank, Healer and DPS instantly with the 1, 2 and 3 keys, in the middle of a fight. That switch is the heart of the game, so it has to be in the slice.

A thin slice for a game like this is one arena, one full 3v3 match, all three roles, and the switch between them, with final-quality models, effects, sound and HUD. It does not need every mode. Tingbase has PvP arenas, deathmatch and co-op waves, plus a Simple and a Complex ability mode, but one mode played start to finish tells you more than five half-built ones.

What a slice looks like in Mini Games Arena

Mini Games Arena is a different shape. Players meet in a hub, the host starts a shuffled run of short minigames, every round scores points, and the top players end on a podium. Coins from kills, goals and wins go to a locker with skins, emotes, weapons, cars and trails.

Here the slice is not one minigame. It’s the whole loop at a small size: the hub, two or three minigames, scoring, the podium and the locker. That proves the flow works. After that, each new minigame is content you repeat, and the slice tells you what one costs.

How thin to make it

Pick the smallest piece that has a start, the core challenge and an end. For a match-based game that’s one match. For a level-based game that’s one level. If the piece can’t be played start to finish by someone who has never seen it, it’s not a slice yet.

Keep the amount of content tiny and the quality high. One finished arena teaches you more than three rough ones.

Time the second one

The first finished asset is slow because you are also building the pipeline: import settings, materials, sound setup, how things get into the build. The second one shows the real cost. Time it, multiply by how many you plan to ship, and you have an honest estimate for the rest of the game. If the second takes as long as the first, the pipeline is not ready yet.

This is where a slice saves a small team. It turns “we’ll add more maps later” into a number. If that number does not fit, cut features before you start production, not after.

What you leave out

Placeholders are fine in places a player barely looks, like a menu icon, as long as you mark them. The main play area should be final, or the slice won’t tell you the real cost. Known bugs can stay if they don’t block a full playthrough. Menus, options, extra modes and progression beyond what the loop needs can wait.

When you’re done

The slice is done when a new player can start it, play the whole piece, and finish it at the quality you plan to ship, and you know how long the next piece takes. Then you can decide whether to build the rest of the game, show it to a publisher, or turn part of it into a demo for your Steam page.

This post first appeared on yuvalgg.com. Read the full guide on yuvalgg.com, with an interactive check for whether what you have is a prototype or a slice. If you are still deciding what goes in the game at all, I wrote up how I scope a first game too.

DEV Community: Yuval Eizik