The Paralysis
A tower nine stories high begins with a heap of earth.
If you are to don the suit of an architect, and if it was your responsibility to build a tower then where does the building of the tower start?
Is it the ground? Is the start of the tower the first brick laid on earth, or is it the blueprint?
My answer would be that it begins with an idea. It could be a general sense of what the final building looks like or a heap of ideas about what the tower comprises of like their components.
The architect is often fully immersed with that idea and is always honed in on it. A separate labour workforce handles the machineries, bricklaying, sifts the sands, shovelling dirt, mixing cement, and every other part of the work that does not involve imagining.
The architect never leaves the world of ideas, when they see a building under construction- they see it as the potential of the building.
The challenge for software engineers and game developers is that we're both the architect and the builder.
We start with ideas—but then have to step away from that vision to actually build it, piece by piece, from the ground up.
This shift can cause paralysis and indecision. You might lose sight of the big picture, constantly rewriting code, overcomplicating things, or fixing problems that don’t even exist yet. You end up stuck debating tools and details, while the original idea—the tower—fades away.
Switching from imagining to building isn’t smooth. It’s a jarring shift. You trade the clarity of vision for the control of implementation—and that trade can break your focus and scatter your intent.
Introducing Top-Down Programming
As I like to call it, the architect's programming style.
This style demands the programmer to start from the top and work their way down. While a real life construction project cannot begin without laying bricks, in programming you can.
if playerHasDied():
triggerGameOver()
You can start from here. Both playerHasDied and triggerGameOver doesn't have to be defined right away. As a matter of fact they don't even have to produce actual values as of yet.
def playerHasDied():
return true
def triggerGameOver():
print "Game Over"
This approach keeps you working at the level of ideas, not just code. You're outlining behaviour, expressing intent. It's clear what the game is trying to do, even if the details are missing. This is top-down programming in action: starting from the vision and slowly descending into specifics.
What else does it do?
It preserves momentum. You don’t get stuck trying to make every function work before you even know if you need it.
It mirrors how we think: from abstract to concrete.
It makes the code read like a story, which is easier to follow and reason about.
It helps you avoid premature optimization and feature bloat by keeping you focused on what matters right now.
It aligns with prototyping. You can quickly stub out large systems and tighten the bolts later.
But—don’t take it too far.
You will eventually need to come back and fill in the ground-level logic. If you write too many hollow functions without anchoring them, you risk building a house of cards.
Balance Use top-down to clarify your direction, then ground it with bottom-up implementation when the time is right.
The Roadmap
Let this series of snippets give you a more intuitive understanding of what a development progress looks like, and later I'll give you a few exercises to build up the habit of top-down programming.
def updateGame():
updatePlayer()
updateEnemies()
checkWinCondition()
We don't yet care how enemies behave or what it means to win — just that these things matter.
def updatePlayer():
movePlayer()
applyGravity()
checkPlayerHealth()
The point is to know what defines a “player update.”
def movePlayer():
direction = getInputDirection()
player.x += direction.x * player.speed
player.y += direction.y * player.speed
This is your first brick. You are now building the logic at the ground level.
def applyGravity():
if not player.onGround:
player.velocityY += GRAVITY
player.y += player.velocityY
And as a bonus, core logic emerges naturally once we name the intention. We didn’t plan gravity up front — but the structure made space for it.
As you can see there's a lot of space to take advantage of rapid prototyping in this style, as you are highly encouraged to stub out what you don't need yet and pretend that they exist or do something:
def updateEnemies():
pass # We'll define this later when enemy behaviour becomes relevant
Challenge Yourself and Build The Habit
There are no wrong answers here, only wrong intentions.
Set your mind to think from the top by filling in the function bodies. Feel free to leave a comment! It helps everyone.
1) Inventory Handling / Management
def handleInventory():
___()
___()
___()
2) Enemy Behaviour
def enemyBehaviour():
if ___():
___()
elif ___():
___()
else:
___()
3) Enemy AI
def updateEnemyAI():
if canSeePlayer():
if ___():
chasePlayer()
else:
___()
elif ___():
if isAlertTimerExpired():
returnToPatrol()
else:
___()
else:
___()
That's all!
Congratulations for reaching the end of this article, I know it took some time for us to get here but I hope that I have imparted useful knowledge to you. With that said, I want to make it clear that top-down programming has existed since the dawn of programming languages and I am not an innovator of it. I also discourage dogmatic approach to just about any programming paradigm, principle, and or styles. Let your experience guide you. And let's help each other out, spread the word. Give me some feedback, thoughts, or criticism otherwise.
Have a wonderful day or night.
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