Signed Off: Art Direction and Polish for Solo Indie Games

AI can produce a character, a screen, or a working feature quickly. It can also leave you with a game whose assets do not belong together, whose details fall apart up close, and whose unfinished edges make it feel like nobody was in charge.

In Signed Off, I explain how I make games alone by treating AI as the team I direct. I replace prompt-and-accept with a production path: define the visual standard, write the brief, compare rough sketches, approve color, build a complete design sheet, inspect the final, and promote only the work that belongs in the game.

The book shows how to judge the right things at each stage, lock colors before they drift, keep generated detail honest, use simple geometry references when straight lines matter, and review a final both up close and at the size the player will see. It also covers the polish screenshots miss: stutters, weak motion, behavior without a reason, and code accepted only because it works.

No drawing or programming experience is required. The method is about deciding what right looks like, writing it down, and looking carefully enough to hold that standard from the first idea to the finished game.