A few more things I'd add The OP mentioned using tests instead of the entire game. You could also consider splitting the tests. The code base I'm on now has 9

A few more things I'd add The OP mentioned using tests instead of the entire game. You could also consider splitting the tests. The code base I'm on now has 9 test suites. It would be much slower if all 9 were merged into 1. So, if you have a monolithic test suite consider breaking it apart. Our team also has a CI/CQ so I never run all the tests myself. I run the tests I think my change affects. When it passes I upload to the CQ and let it run all the tests. Then I go work on something else and check later if it all passd. In games there is often no need to run on the target hardware for 95% of tasks so choose the hardware that's fastest. In other words, if you're making a game that can run on PC, PS5, XBox then develop on PC and only switch to PS5,XBox when you have to (platform specific features, checking perf, etc.). For VR for example I'd test via PC on a link cable or on a Vive/Index/Rift and only test on standalone Quest when I absolutely had to. So much time saved. The same is true in other places. I work a very large project that run on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android). Building and testing on Linux is 10x faster than Windows, 40x faster than Mac. Once I found that out I switched to Linux for my day to day work and only pull out the other devices if the stuff I'm working on is platform specific.