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The Mechanics of Magic

The Mechanics of Magic

Game Design Writings by Students at Stanford taking 247G and 377G

  • Library
    • CS247G Community Game Design Resources
    • Game Design Resources
    • Graphic Design for Game Designers
    • Graphic Design Resources
    • Chapter 11 from Game Balance
  • Read Write Play
    • Hollow Knight: RWP 4 2023
    • Mystic Messenger: RWP 6 2023
    • Undertale: RWP 3 2023
    • What Remains of Edith Finch: RWP 5 2023
    • Catan: RWP1 2023
    • 80 Days: RWP 2 2023
  • 247G Syllabus
    • The Formal Elements of Game Design
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture B
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section A
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section B
    • Design for Play | Week Five | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 5 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class A (no class)
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Lecture B
  • Serious Play Study Group Overview
    • Study Group Week by Week Breakdown
      • Formal Elements of Games
      • Final Reflection Essay
    • [Optional Material] What is fun?
    • Project 1: Those Who Play, Teach
      • READING Visual Design of Board Games
      • Pitch Your Teaching Game
      • Sketchnote: Playtesting Boardgames
      • Sketchnote: Erin Hoffman // Wind, Not Sand: Mapping Dynamic Emotion Across a Product Landscape
      • SketchNote: MDAO
      • Critical Play: Write up your game of FLUXX
      • [Optional Material] Playtesting
      • OPTIONAL Board Game Usability
    • P2: The Future We Deserve
      • Critical Play: A Mechanic and a Story to Tell
      • Interactive Fiction: Tiny Playable Prototype
      • Introducing Interactive Fiction
      • Map and Premise
      • Critical Play: Story AND Storytelling games
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Sketchnote: Art of game design- Story
      • [Optional Material] Emergence and Progression
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Project 2 Reflection Essay
      • Share what you Learned: Writing Excuses Podcast
      • Values at Play & P2 Peer Grading
    • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
      • P3 Concept Doc
      • Playable prototype
      • Working With System Dynamics (mindmap the reading, apply it to your game)
      • Mapping Systems
      • Sketchnote/Response for Rules & Tutorials
      • Project 3 Check-in
      • Project 3 Reflection Essay
    • P4: Refine a game
      • Sketchnote/Response for Playtesting with Strangers
      • Read: Mechanic is the Magic
  • On Sketchnotes
  • Printing at Stanford

Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames

April 25, 2026

Project 1: Blindspot

April 24, 2026

Artist’s Statement Blind Spot is a social improv game about talking, reacting, and trying not to mess up under pressure!  At its core, the…

Project 1: Emergency Response

April 24, 2026

Artist’s statement: Emergency Response is a multiplayer cooperative social game designed around teamwork, communication, and shared responsibility. The core idea of the game is…

Critical Play: Tiny Rooms- Jessica

April 24, 2026

As I played Tiny Rooms, a free mobile game, I was struck with just how much having a freemium or a pay to play…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators — A Short Hike

April 24, 2026

[Spoilers Warning! Key details about A Short Hike’s plot are shared below] I played A Short Hike by Adam Robinson-Yu on MacOS. The game…

Critical Play – Eternal Afternoon

April 24, 2026

For this critical play, I tried out the game Eternal Afternoon. The game was developed by Alex Klebler, and was released on Steam in…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

The game I played is Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (2017), the rebooted version of Dear Esther (2012) developed by The Chinese Room and originally…

Ryan Li, Critical Play: Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

(The first jumpscare in this game made me pee my pants a little. It was more of a walking-in-shame-to-the-bathroom simulator.) Year Walk is a…

RWP Week 3: Bokaro Planet And What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

April 24, 2026

Playing BOKURA: Planet began as a cooperation-based puzzle solving game but quickly evolved into something more nuanced and even unsettling. I went in expecting…

Critical Play: Babbdi Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

BABBDI, developed by the Lemaitre Bros and free on Steam, is best suited for players who enjoy atmospheric, unsettling games and are comfortable leaving…

Critical Play: Night in the Woods

April 24, 2026

Night in the Woods (2017), developed by Infinite Fall (Alec Holowka, Scott Benson, and Bethany Hockenberry), is a digital walking simulator that handles mature…

Sosi Day Walking Simulator Critical Play

April 24, 2026

I played Paperbark, a beautiful and simple game following the movements of a wombat in the Australian bush. Paperbark is a point-and-click exploration video…

Mayowa – Critical Play: Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

A Short Hike is a 2019 adventure indie game by designed Adam Robinson-Yu. It’s available on many different platforms, but I chose to play…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators – Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture – Akary Buenrostro

April 24, 2026

Developer: The Chinese Room (Dan Pinchbeck, Jessica Curry) Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Platform: PlayStation 4, Windows, Linux, Mac Release: 2015 SPOILERS FOR THE LAST…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators – Tray

April 24, 2026

What Remains of Edith Finch (What Remains) is a first-person narrative game developed by Giant Sparrow and published by Annapurna Interactive. First released in…

Critical Play – Journey (Jinpu)

April 24, 2026

Journey, designed by Jenova Chen and developed by thatgamecompany, is a walking simulator first released on PlayStation 3 in 2012 and now available on…

Critical Play: Walking Simulators (BABBDI)

April 24, 2026

BABBDI: Explorative Architecture at the Expense of Narrative Architecture BABBDI, the 2022 indie exploration video game developed by Sirius and Léonard Lemaitre, leaves you…

Read, Write, Play: BOKURA: Planet – Krystal Li

April 24, 2026

This week, I played BOKURA: planet, a two-player puzzle game made by Tokoronyori. At first, the game seems like a typical co-op platformer where…

Fiona – Critical Play: Walking Simulators

April 24, 2026

In The Sailor’s Dream, walking, or drifting, is a mechanic that challenges conventional game assumptions about pacing and reward. Designed by SIMOGO AB, this…

Bokura Planet is Not Really About Trust or Bats?

April 24, 2026

Ah, a deep co-op video game about being controlled by a parasite! Obviously, this video game would talk about trust, and the phenomenology of…

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Welcome to the Stanford HCI Game Design Blog.

Currently this blog holds two formal classes being taught by Christina Wodtke as well as Independent Study Work. In winter of 2022, cs377g was cancelled because of covid-19 uncertainty, and became a study group. You can follow along by looking at the SGSG syllabus and weekly break down.

CS 247G: Design for Play(SYMSYS 195G)

A project-based course that builds on the introduction to design in CS147 by focusing on advanced methods and tools for research, prototyping, and user interface design. Studio based format with intensive coaching and iteration to prepare students for tackling real world design problems. This course takes place entirely in studios; please plan on attending every studio to take this class. The focus of CS247g is an introduction to theory and practice of the design of games. We will make digital and paper games, do rapid iteration and run user research studies appropriate to game design. This class has multiple short projects, allowing us to cover a variety of genres, from narrative to pure strategy. Prerequisites: 147 or equivalent background.

CS 377G: Designing Serious Games

Over the last few years we have seen the rise of "serious games" to promote understanding of complex social and ecological challenges, and to create passion for solving them. This project-based course provides an introduction to game design principals while applying them to games that teach. Run as a hands-on studio class, students will design and prototype games for social change and civic engagement. We will learn the fundamentals of games design via lecture and extensive reading in order to make effective games to explore issues facing society today. The course culminates in an end-of- quarter open house to showcase our games. Prerequisite: CS147 or equivalent. 247G recommended, but not required.

SGSG: Serious Games Study Group

  • Library
    • CS247G Community Game Design Resources
    • Game Design Resources
    • Graphic Design for Game Designers
    • Graphic Design Resources
    • Chapter 11 from Game Balance
  • Read Write Play
    • Hollow Knight: RWP 4 2023
    • Mystic Messenger: RWP 6 2023
    • Undertale: RWP 3 2023
    • What Remains of Edith Finch: RWP 5 2023
    • Catan: RWP1 2023
    • 80 Days: RWP 2 2023
  • 247G Syllabus
    • The Formal Elements of Game Design
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week One | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Two | Lecture B
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture A
    • Design for Play | Week Three | Lecture B
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section A
    • Design For Play | Week Four | Section B
    • Design for Play | Week Five | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 5 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class A (no class)
    • Design for Play | Week 6 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 7 | Class B
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Class A
    • Design for Play | Week 8 | Lecture B
  • Serious Play Study Group Overview
    • Study Group Week by Week Breakdown
      • Formal Elements of Games
      • Final Reflection Essay
    • [Optional Material] What is fun?
    • Project 1: Those Who Play, Teach
      • READING Visual Design of Board Games
      • Pitch Your Teaching Game
      • Sketchnote: Playtesting Boardgames
      • Sketchnote: Erin Hoffman // Wind, Not Sand: Mapping Dynamic Emotion Across a Product Landscape
      • SketchNote: MDAO
      • Critical Play: Write up your game of FLUXX
      • [Optional Material] Playtesting
      • OPTIONAL Board Game Usability
    • P2: The Future We Deserve
      • Critical Play: A Mechanic and a Story to Tell
      • Interactive Fiction: Tiny Playable Prototype
      • Introducing Interactive Fiction
      • Map and Premise
      • Critical Play: Story AND Storytelling games
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Sketchnote: Art of game design- Story
      • [Optional Material] Emergence and Progression
      • Essay or Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters
      • Project 2 Reflection Essay
      • Share what you Learned: Writing Excuses Podcast
      • Values at Play & P2 Peer Grading
    • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
      • P3 Concept Doc
      • Playable prototype
      • Working With System Dynamics (mindmap the reading, apply it to your game)
      • Mapping Systems
      • Sketchnote/Response for Rules & Tutorials
      • Project 3 Check-in
      • Project 3 Reflection Essay
    • P4: Refine a game
      • Sketchnote/Response for Playtesting with Strangers
      • Read: Mechanic is the Magic
  • On Sketchnotes
  • Printing at Stanford

Archives

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Recent Posts

  • Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames
  • Project 1: Blindspot
  • Project 1: Emergency Response
  • Critical Play: Tiny Rooms- Jessica
  • Critical Play: Walking Simulators — A Short Hike

Recent Comments

  • ban on Defining “Feeling” With the Aliens of Bokura: Planet
  • Christina Wodtke on Critical Play: Competitive Analysis (Incan Gold)
  • ban on Monsters of the Mirror (RWP)
  • ban on Absurdity in Slay the Princess: An Essay on Violent Contrasts
  • Trini Rogando on Monsters of the Mirror (RWP)

Categories

  • P2: The Empathy Machine
  • Featured
  • Project One
  • milestone
  • P2: The Future We Deserve
  • mindmap
  • P1: Social Games
  • CS247G
  • Assignments
  • P1: those who play, teach
  • Lectures
  • P2: Games In Space
  • Critical Play
  • P3: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
  • Project Two
  • Project Four REFINE
  • P4: Refine a Game
  • Sketchnotes
  • Project Two: The Future We Deserve
  • From the Instructor
  • Project Three: The Game of Unexpected Consequences
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  • SGSG

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