Basic Game Design



The purpose of this exercise is to define major elements of your educational game. You must take into account different "player types." You do not need to have a "perfect" game. The purpose of this document is to describe the game well and describe how your knowledge of the elements of game design in this course were used to influence the design of your game. Most answers, especially those in the middle, should be several paragraphs, not just a few sentences. By the time I finish reading the document, I should be able to have full picture of what your game actually is. In addition, you need to fully articulate how your game design satisfies the game design principles of this course. This is not a short document.

This document needs to illustrate that you have put substantial thought into how to make an engaging game for your educational content. Specifically, any quiz-style games, memory-style games, or other simplistic games will not be acceptable for a passing grade.

You will begin with your revised learning content document that you already turned in and got returned. Make any revisions that you or I have decided should be made. Then add this content to the end of it.

Assume that you still have a full design team. Do not use the 10-week time constraint and 2-person implementation team resource constraint affect your design. Design without such constraints.

First summarize the game type, placing it into a genre. What is a well-known game that most closely resembles your game? And what are the major differences between yours and that game?

Next, describe your game, taking care to describe the different elements such as premise, rules, etc. This needs to be long and detailed enough for me to understand your game. This is not just a few sentences.

Describe how different "player types" will find something that engages them.

Describe how your game premise, characters, etc. are appealing to the mythical users that you created last project, and how you took their interests / knowledge into account as you designed the game.

Describe how your game makes the user progress through the different elements in the learning trajectory you produced. How do you teach different elements and how do you gradually increase the difficulty and/or complexity as users progress through the levels?