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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 2026

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 1, 2026

For this Critical Play, I played Cube Escape: Paradox on my macOS after downloading it from Steam. This is a single player game developed…

When Games Force Your Hand: How “Bastion” Fumbles Its Critique of Complicity

May 1, 2026

[Beware spoilers for Bastion.]   In the early 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram ran an experiment measuring participants’ willingness to commit violence when encouraged by an…

May 1, 2026

Critical Play Response This week I played Cube Escape: Paradox (CEP), a 2018 free-to-play narrative escape room designed by the indie studio Rusty Lake….

Critical Play – Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 1, 2026

Walking Through the Aftermath: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture as Narrative Archaeology Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, developed by The Chinese Room and published…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 1, 2026

Cube Escape: Paradox, is a digital escape room puzzle game that was created by Rusty Lake. The game was released on platforms like Steam,…

Critical Play: Mysteries and Escape Rooms — Escape Room Simulator 2

May 1, 2026

I played Escape Simulator 2 (ES2), specifically Dracula’s Castle, on MacOS through Steam, which was developed by Pine Studios and designed for a general…

Sketchnote: The Role of Architecture in Videogames – Hunaida Elhassan

May 1, 2026
screenshot of gameplay from gone home

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms (Gone Home)

May 1, 2026

Gone Home is a “walking simulator” developed by The Fullbright Company. I played it on PC, and the target audience is likely players age…

Critical Play: Tiny Rooms Story Mystery

May 1, 2026

Tiny Rooms Story is a mobile puzzle-adventure game developed by Kiary Games, available on mobile, Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Mac. It targets players who…

SPOILERS—Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms—EXIT: The House of Riddles—Akary Buenrostro

May 1, 2026

EXIT: The House of Riddles | Thames & Kosmos | Tabletop | 1-4 players, ages 12+, puzzle and (allegedly) escape room enthusiasts. I argue…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms – Kelvin

May 1, 2026

For this critical play, I chose Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery, which is a mobile escape room game developed by Kiary Games, and is…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms — Escape Simulator 2 (Dracula 1-3)

May 1, 2026

The game I played was Escape Simulator 2 (ES2), a video game developed by Pine Studio and released in 2025. The game is rated for…

Critical Play: Mysteries & Escape Rooms

May 1, 2026

For this week’s critical play on mystery games, I’ve played Cube Escape: Paradox. Cube Escape: Paradox is a mystery / escape room game developed…

Mai – Critical Play: Year Walk

May 1, 2026

For this week’s Critical Play, I played Year Walk, an eerie adventure game developed by Swedish mobile studio Simogo. It was originally designed for…

Sosi Day Critical Play – Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery

May 1, 2026

I played Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery, a mystery game in which the player must decode clues to unlock new rooms and proceed through…

Critical Play: The Heist Escape Room

May 1, 2026

The Heist is a physical escape room created by The Escape Game for casual to intermediate group players of ages 12+. Designed for an…

Checkpoint 1: Concept Doc

May 1, 2026

Moodboard The moodboard was mainly inspirational to me to get a lot of inspiration for pixel-art in grayscale, from character design, to world layout,…

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

Archives

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Recent Posts

  • Learning to play closely – Lebriz Clayton
  • What games are and aren’t
  • Learning to Play Closely – Owen Sample
  • Learn to Play Closely | Good Pizza, Great Pizza – Yunming Huang (Lucy)
  • MDA Overwatch Quick Play Push the Payload

Recent Comments

  • 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
  • Jinhyo Huh on Final Reflection – Leo Sui

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
  • 377G: Serious Games
  • SGSG

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