aclesh – The Mechanics of Magic

Final Class Reflection – Andrew

June 7, 2025

I very much don’t consider myself a gamer, and my relative lack of experience with games of all kinds (both board games and video…

[Extra Credit] Sketchnote : Cursed Problems – Andrew

June 2, 2025

Critical Play: Play Like a Feminist – Depression Quest

May 30, 2025

Depression Quest is a 2013 interactive fiction game developed by Zoe Quinn, Patrick Lindsey, and Isaac Shankler initially for web browsers and later as…

Sketchnote: Onboarding in Plants vs Zombies – Andrew

May 28, 2025

Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction – Andrew

May 23, 2025

Pokemon Go, released in 2016 by Niantic and Nintendo, (with Scopely taking over from Niantic in 2025), is a live service mobile game for…

Sketchnote: Addiction by Design – Andrew

May 19, 2025

Critical Play: Worldbuilding – Andrew

May 16, 2025

A Dark Room is a text-based survival/adventure game developed by Michael Townsend, the lead developer of Doublespeak Games. While its ports to mobile devices…

Sketchnote: Loops & Arcs – Andrew

May 14, 2025

Critical Play: Puzzles – Andrew

May 9, 2025

Portal is a first-person puzzle platformer originally made by Valve for Windows, PS3, and Xbox 360 (though it has since been ported to Mac…

Sketchnote: Puzzles in Games, Puzzles as Games – Andrew

May 6, 2025

P2 Checkpoint 1: Individual Concept Doc – Andrew

May 5, 2025

Mood Board: Playlist: Early Art: Game Directions: 1) Point and Click: The game features a ladybug exploring different stages and solving basic…

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…

Sketchnote: Designer’s Notebook: The Role of Architecture in Videogames – Andrew

April 30, 2025

Critical Play: Walking Simulators – Andrew

April 25, 2025

Babbdi, available on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux (and Itch.io for Windows only), can be considered a walking simulator due to its…

Mindmap: Narrative Architecture – Andrew

April 23, 2025

Jenga Critical Play: Competitive Analysis – Andrew

April 18, 2025

To play a game with some important similarities to my team’s item stacking game, I played Jenga, a physical block-based game developed in the…

Sketchnote: Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships – Andrew

April 16, 2025

Critical Play: Bluffing, Judging and Getting Vulnerable – Andrew

April 11, 2025

I played 7 matches of Among Us by InnerSloth on mobile (Android), first released in 2018. This game pits impostors against a crew of…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype? – Andrew

April 10, 2025

Our game, at least at the time of writing, is a party game that revolves around stacking items found at the party location into…

Sketchnote: What Games Are and Aren’t – Andrew Lesh

April 5, 2025