Before this class, I thought “games” mostly meant the popular titles I already knew — shooters like CS:GO that chase raw sensory excitement, or competitive games like League of Legends and DOTA. In my mind, a good game was one that thrilled your senses, and popularity was proof of good design. I didn’t really see anything underneath that surface.
This class changed that. I learned that games come in many kinds, and that even the most visually striking ones are full of quiet, almost invisible design details that keep players engaged over time. Classic games often rely on mechanics that quietly balance the players’ choices and rewards. Once I started noticing this hidden layer, I could no longer un-see it.
The concept that stuck with me most was the MDA framework — Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics. It gave me a vocabulary to ask not just “is this fun?” but “which mechanic produces this feeling?” We applied it directly to our P2 project. Our first version tried to do too much, with a stressful daytime kitchen-management mode and a nighttime deduction mode, and playtesters found it confusing. Using MDA, we cut it down to a single, focused deduction game.
The hardest challenge was puzzle design. Our early version included many red herrings, but playtests showed players disliked clues that misled without purpose. They did not create the “aha” feeling, where an answer first surprises you and then feels inevitable. So I rebuilt the mystery around a time-gap: Remy was not simply stealing student-council money; he was trying to cover a trip payment before his paycheck arrived, too ashamed to ask for need-based aid. We changed distracting clues into inner monologues, kept only essential evidence, and made the lost-and-recovered key his intentional smoke bomb. The difficulty is that every clue needs closure, and fixing one gap can open another.
The assignments changed how I learn. Sketchnotes pushed me to summarize articles and videos with simple shapes, keywords, and relationships instead of only long notes. I am not a strong illustrator, and seeing other people’s notes become more polished was intimidating, but the method still helped me read better. Critical Play changed my mindset even more. Playing as a designer made me ask why a game chose a rule, camera angle, reward, or failure state, instead of only asking whether I enjoyed it. Journey moved me with its beauty and gentle, wordless guidance, and Monument Valley overturned the spatial intuition I’d built from my architecture background, using optical illusion to make the impossible walkable.
Our day-night design sounded exciting, but in playtests it created confusion and made clues easy to forget. If I keep working on our P2 game, I want to bring back daytime tension more carefully, connect it to the night investigation, and make sure every clue has a reason, a consequence, and an ending. Most of all, I will keep asking: what feeling does this mechanic create?
AI usage: I used AI to help refine this writing and check grammar.
Journey is magnificent, isn’t it? Have a great summer, and keep playing and making!