the concept for "gunpoint" came from francis' review work for "pc gamer uk", as he found himself often writing means of suggesting how games could be improved, and considered himself too harsh for writing such criticism. he wanted to make a game that avoided the pitfall of assuming "the player is stupid", and instead not worry about if the player out-thought his own level design. the idea of the crosslink tool made it effectively a type of limited level editor to let the player complete each level in the manner they wanted to. francis considered that the stealth element was less about evasion and more on simply avoiding being even seen by the guards; he considered that for most other games, player characters can typically take a great deal of damage, and instead wanted to make the player consider the guards' guns as serious threats and included instant death if seen by the guards. the crosslink tool could thus allow players to deal with such guards without even being in the same room. francis did cut out one element of the crosslink tool that would allow the player to remotely activate a device that is on an accessible circuit as he felt this would make for trivial solutions.