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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

Month: May 2024

Critical Play – Mysteries

May 7, 2024

NOTE: This entry contains spoilers for Year Walk. This week, I sat down to play Year Walk, an eerie puzzle game developed and published…

Critical Play Mystery: Diner in the Storm

May 7, 2024

Peter Ling Mystery Critical Play   “Diner in the Storm” is a narrative based mystery game that targets young adults as well as older…

Critical Play: Mysteries, Amy Zhou; Life is Strange

May 7, 2024

The Narrative Genius of “Life is Strange” “Life is Strange,” developed by the imaginative minds at Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix, captures…

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc – Team Submission – Cardinal Conquest: Hoover Horror

May 7, 2024

Cardinal Conquest: Hoover Horror Synopsis: Cardinal Conquest – Hoover Horror is a 2D, 8-bit puzzle adventure game where players control a Stanford student navigating…

Team 16 – Checkpoint 1: Individual by Ngoc

May 7, 2024

Moodboard:  Spotify Playlist: The mood of this playlist goes from happy to curious to grim! Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1isoJ8UL8eyQczKw7bDcPQ?si=44d62a92717c4301 Directions the Game Could Go: 1 – Quest…

Abhi Desai – P2 Checkpoint 1 Individual Contribution

May 7, 2024

Emotions: Mysterious Curious Whimsical Mood Board: Spotify Playlist Directions: A 2D puzzle game where Stanford students are trying to prevent an evil wizard, TML,…

P2 T10 CP1 Group Concept Doc

May 7, 2024

Individual Brainstorms Eugene Hong Sofia Kim Butch Nasser Jennifer Quach Valerie Tang Synopsis This game highlights exploration, of the physical space around you, the…

Critical Play – Life is Strange

May 6, 2024

Target audience: M 17+ Name of the game: Life is Strange Game’s creator: Dontnod Entertainment Platform of the game: PC, Playstation, Xbox, Switch “Life is Strange”…

P2: Individual Checkpoint 1 – Ellie

May 6, 2024

My team is planning to make an app-driven card game, featuring escape-room-esque puzzles that see the player descending through the floors of an abandoned…

Critical Play: Life Is Strange – Charlotte Zhu

May 6, 2024

In “Life Is Strange,” the player is prompted to gather information about objects and people and traverse loops of story through the “time rewind”…

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc

May 6, 2024

Queen of the Court Theme: High school, prom queen Target audience: Young adults 16+ that enjoy narrative-driven experiences and drama Number of players: 3-4,…

Individual Concept 1 Checkpoint

May 6, 2024

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BNZoHSbrROdPLGCvQTDyA?si=14da2c8915174d90 Moodboard: Three Directions: Concept of friends and enemies: players can become allies (friends) with other characters in the game to navigate…

Week 5 Individual Team Member Deliverables

May 6, 2024

Emotions: Excitement, disorientation, intrigue Moodboard: Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vWgdtUQOkx3k8KEbMyvIc?si=aed3f79b3d144739 Directions: You wake up in your bed, hungover af, and turn the TV on. Kim Kardashian’s baby…

Checkpoint 1 – Individual deliverables

May 6, 2024

Spotify playlist: Emotions: calm and cozy at first, then inquisitive and mysterious as the mission progresses Directions: When you enter the game, you hatch…

P2 Checkpoint 1 Individual Deliverable – Oluseyi Ogundipe

May 6, 2024

  Emotions: Intrigue Wonder Satisfaction Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6C9u2LeYeN6hBAltI5F9lU?si=2a9a447262b8421e Direction 1: A samurai looking for revenge finds himself led to an ancient crypt where he believes…

Parthav Shergill – P2 Checkpoint 1 Individual Contribution

May 6, 2024

Playlist: Moodboard: Emotions: Disorientation Curiosity Frolicky Direction 1: You wake up with no memory. From artifacts and gadgets in your room, you realize that…

Naima Patel Checkpoint 1 – Individual Member

May 6, 2024

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Q6pqBbtCwsUlopR5km806?si=ebd6e319583c4fc8 Emotions I’d like to evoke: Humor: The game should maintain a lighthearted feeling as the user plays it. Mystery: It shouldn’t…

P2 Individual Checkpoint 1

May 6, 2024

Emotions to Evoke: Game Directions Moodboard Spotify Playlist

P2 Individual Deliverable

May 6, 2024

Emotions: Nostalgic, Melancholic, Pensive   Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/30LptGpXelUJQ8qoSJUzyC?si=f48cb9d7cf0b402c   Directions We have coalesced around the setting of a sunken San Francisco, which is in…

Checkpoint 1 – Individual Member

May 6, 2024

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Y3hp3iHKQJZaOCmfy77c4?si=vuNf8_KVTaCBYQdlvqT8bw&pi=u-84djG4g6Qoas Direction 1: There are several levels to enlightenment for the samurai. To advance to the next level, a samurai must defeat…

Posts pagination

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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

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Categories

  • P2: The Empathy Machine
  • Featured
  • Project One
  • milestone
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