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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 2025

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Room – Andrew

May 2, 2025

Cube Escape: Paradox, by developer Rusty Lake, is an escape room game available on Steam and Itch.io for Mac and Windows as well as…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Elliott

May 2, 2025

For this week’s Critical Play, I played Life is Strange (2015), developed by Don’t Nod through Steam on Mac. The target audience is likely…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Katherine

May 2, 2025

The game I chose was Gone Home, developed by Fullbright, as I was intrigued by how such a quiet, slow-paced game could still be…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Mateo LF

May 2, 2025

Architecture as Plot: A Designer’s Critique of *** read while listening to the the soundtrack Game: Tiny Room Stories: Town MysteryDeveloper: Kiary GamesPlatform: iOS,…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Cole

May 2, 2025

This week, I played Tiny Rooms Story Mystery. Playing as a private detective trying to uncover the mysteries of a deserted town, you gradually…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

I’m typically not so fond of thriller movies, so it was a surprise for me to find myself genuinely enjoying a murder mystery escape…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms — Kristine

May 2, 2025

For this week’s critical play, I playtested Cube Escape: Paradox. I played Chapter 1 of the game on Steam. The game was released on…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

Content Warning: Descriptive and mild graphic depictions of violence and blood. “Only this time, it started in a hospital…” Steve Gabry is an award…

Critical Play: Cube Escape – Paradox, Mai Mostafa

May 2, 2025

For my Critical Play this week, I chose to play Cube Escape: Paradox. This game is a point and click style mystery game/escape room…

Critical Play: Mystery and Escape

May 2, 2025

Game: Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery Target Audience: 8+ (as labelled). I think this is too young – the game is ideal for those…

Checkpoint 0: Team Norms – Sarah Teaw, Kristine Ma, Varsha Saravanan

May 2, 2025

Task Management: Google Drive and Doc: CS 247G P2 Open, clear, and consistent communication with team members.  Set clear goals for what to discuss…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Lour Drick

May 2, 2025

Last weekend, I went to Red Door Escape Room in San Mateo, CA, for a birthday celebration, which was my first time ever doing…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Tesvara Jiang

May 2, 2025

I played Life is Strange Episode 1 (which was the only free version on Steam). Life is Strange is a choose your adventure game…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Sarah Teaw

May 2, 2025

I played Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery, which was created by Kiary Games, an indie studio in Limassol, Cyprus. Its target audience is players…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

Introduction: About the Game Tiny Rooms Story: Town Mystery is a puzzle-driven adventure game developed by Kiary Games. It’s intended for people who enjoy…

Tiny Room Stories Critical Play — Tommy

May 2, 2025

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery is exactly what it sounds like: a game in which you explore various tiny rooms across a mysterious town…

Critical Play: mysteries and escape rooms – jess

May 2, 2025

In Tiny Room Story: Mystery Town, a mobile mystery puzzle game available on the App Store, players step into the role of a detective…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

Background I played Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery. This embedded narrative mystery puzzle game was created by Kiary Games, and is designed for ages…

Critical Play: Gone Home

May 2, 2025

Game Info:   Name: Gone Home   Creator/Developer: The Fullbright Company, Annapurna Interactive   Target Audience: Anyone 15+, but definitely geared towards the younger…

Team Norms: Team 2

May 2, 2025

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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Recent Posts

  • CS 247G – Critical Play: Competitive Analysis
  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis — Deep Sea Adventure
  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis – Owen Sample
  • Secret Hitler – Critical Play: Competitive Analysis – Rohan Gonzalez
  • Critical Play–Competetive Analysis

Recent Comments

  • Sizhe Wu on Introduce Yourself – Carl
  • Christina Wodtke on Short Exercise: Learning to Play closely
  • Christina Wodtke on Short Exercise: Learning to Play Closely – Fruit Ninja
  • Aksel Kolasinski on Hi! I’m Mathias
  • Aksel Kolasinski on Self Introduction – Cameron H

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
  • ReadWritePlay
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  • SGSG

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