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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

Team norms — Team 21

May 2, 2025

Norms Communicate and explicitly explain what needs to be done and have a pretty good understanding of how the subtask should be done  (e.g.,…

Mysteries and escape rooms

May 2, 2025

Background of Game I played Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery by Kiary Games Ltd., where you assume the role of a private investigator trying…

Checkpoint 0: Team Norms

May 2, 2025

Team Norms Over communicate Take initiative and follow through on commitment Set deadlines and meet them, and let them know in a nice way…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Varsha

May 2, 2025

Game Name: Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery Game’s Creator: Vasily Povalyaev via Kiary Games Platform: Compatible with mobile app (Android and iOS), Nintendo Switch,…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

Title: Unsolved: Hidden Mystery Games Creator: Artifex Mundi Platform: iOS Target Audience: Players 12+; Players that like narrative/mystery based games   In this game…

Narrative Architecture is Strange

May 2, 2025

Name: Life is Strange; Target Audience: Ages 16+, people who have or are experiencing high school and understand the stereotypes/tropes; Creator: Dontnod Entertainment, published by Square…

Team Norms – Team 14

May 2, 2025

Team Norms Avoiding blocker tasks among members (don’t take forever if your incomplete task is keeping others from doing their own tasks) Being punctual…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Shang

May 2, 2025

Cube Escape: Paradox was developed by Rusty Lake, an independent studio, and is the tenth installment in the Cube Escape series. It is a…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

I decided to try Cube Escape: Paradox late one night (bad idea). It is created by Rusty Lake, and is available on the Steam…

Critical Play: Life is Strange – Victor

May 2, 2025

Life is Strange is one of the most iconic mystery games of all time. Created by game studio Don’t Nod, it tells the story…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Stella Li

May 2, 2025

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery is a game developed by Kiary Studios. I downloaded it from the App Store and played it on my…

Critical Play 4: Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery

May 2, 2025

Kiary Games’ “Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery,” a free mobile mystery game targeted toward casual games and puzzle enthusiasts ages 13 and up, shows…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Justin

May 2, 2025

WARNING: PORTAL 2 SPOILERS This week, I grabbed a Nintendo Switch and loaded up Portal 2. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been revisiting…

Critical Play: Puzzles – Niam

May 2, 2025

I played Puzzle Post: The Scandal in office hours, which is a mystery puzzle game where all the contents – from the case to…

critical play: escape room! by aribarb

May 2, 2025

At Thursday Game Night hosted by CAs Haven and Ellie, I played The Scandal, a physical “escape room in an envelope” game, with digital interactions…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Dorian Gulley

May 2, 2025

Critical Play Background I decided to play Tiny Rooms Story Mystery, a mystery game by Kiary Games in which a private detective investigates what…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Noe Chicas

May 2, 2025

Gone Home is a first-person exploration game developed by The Fullbright Company. Although it’s available on multiple platforms, I was surprised to find it…

Critical Play: Mysteries and Escape Rooms – Gone Home

May 2, 2025

Game: Gone Home Creator: The Fullbright Company Platform: PC, later ported to Switch Target Audience: Intense themed story targeted at teenagers or adults. Relatively…

Hidden Objectives

May 2, 2025

Jack Ryan — P1 Writup Artist’s Statement:  I designed Hidden Objectives with the intent of bringing out “table talk” from it’s players. In most…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 2, 2025

Target Audience: Ages 15+, Escape room or puzzle enthusiasts Game: Cube Escape: Paradox Creator: Rusty Lake Platform: Mac (Steam) This was my first time…

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

  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis
  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis
  • Critical play- Competetive analysis by Gavin Patton
  • Critical Play: Competitive Analysis – Willow Azevedo
  • Critical Play: Competitive 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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