Lab: Game Design Bits and Pieces

Start with a genre composition like arcade games or platformers. Then, looking at the operational logics catalog, think about adding one logic and removing another and imagine two different games you could make with that combination of operations. You can sketch out drawings on paper or just describe the rules. It can help to look at the catalog and check out the abstract processes and operations to see what your "atoms" are.

If you're having trouble, instead take three games you've played in different genres and try to break them down into logics. One way to do this is to think about the rules—the "if then" sort of things that happen—and think about the underlying ideas from which the conditions and effects are drawn. For example, combos in a fighting game are a new idea—pushing buttons in a particular pattern over time is substantively different from pressing a button to have something specific happen. Similarly, a line disappearing in Tetris is not something that makes sense to think of from a collision standpoint.

Send either analysis to Prof. Osborn on Zulip.