Hemingway had some excellent advice for where to break off for the day when you’re working on a long piece of writing. Maybe it works for more than just writing. I think Hemingway used the analogy of drilling or mining – of course he did. Anyway, the advice goes like this: if you’re breaking for the day, don’t break just before you have to write something difficult. Break before you have to write something easy. The easiness of what you have to write will bring you back in the next day and let you get properly on your way. This is great advice. I use it myself! And it’s unsurprising, I guess, that I’ve been thinking about it while playing Metroid Dread over the last few days. Metroidvanias are wonderful games – they offer you complex worlds to explore, and they make sure that the ways you explore them are constantly evolving as you collect new gadgets and also, crucially, as you come to understand things more. The best Metroidvanias always leave you with a few possibilities to think about at any moment – a few possibilities scattered across the emerging map. A great element of the tension of these…