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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

Author: Seamus Joseph Allen

Critical Play — One Night, Hot Springs

May 29, 2024

‘One night, hot springs’ (ONHS) is an indie game by npckc. It follows the story of a young transgender woman named Haru as she…

Sketchnote — Puzzles in Games

May 24, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Critical Play — Vampire Survivors

May 22, 2024

For my critical play, I selected Vampire Survivors. While not a gambling game per se, its creator, Luca Galante, spent years programming slot machines…

Sketchnote — Architecture in Games

May 17, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Critical Play — Cascadia

May 13, 2024

Cascadia is a game of overlapping puzzles—literally and figuratively. It leverages this overlap to create an incredibly satisfying puzzle experience. In Cascadia, players take…

Sketchnote — Game Architecture

May 9, 2024

This was one of my favorite readings so far! This seems like a very straightforward and practical way to deconstruct a game (or, having…

Critical Play — Return of the Obra Dinn

May 8, 2024

Return of the Obra Dinn is the epitome of an embedded narrative because it fully exploits the gap between the players’ knowledge of the…

After the Fire — Concept Doc

May 8, 2024

Synopsis Our game presents the journey of a young forest spirit to revitalize his home after a devastating wildfire. The main character is a…

After the Fire — Game Direction

May 4, 2024

I imagine After the Fire as a fundamentally hopeful, peaceful game about rebuilding your home and watching life slowly return after tragedy. As a…

Mind Map — Narrative Architecture

May 2, 2024

You can view my mind map here.

Critical Play — Firewatch

May 1, 2024

I sat down intending to play just the first hour or two like the assignment description encourages… But Campo Santo got me. And I’m…

Critical Play — Big Talk

April 24, 2024

While I had a good experience as a player, as a designer I’m not convinced that “Skipping the Small Talk” is all that great…

Sketchnote — Game Design Patterns for Building Friendships

April 19, 2024

You can download my sketchnote here.

Shows the treachery.online interface, which currently displays the dune board.

Critical Play — Dune

April 15, 2024

I selected Dune for my critical play because it is highly asymmetrical and involves a lot of trading, something our game also plans to…

Short Exercise: What do Prototypes Prototype?

April 11, 2024

The following are questions I hope to answer with prototyping for our (Team 28’s) negotiation game about an emperor and his court of nobles:…

Sketchnote — What Games Are and Aren’t

April 11, 2024

Link to my sketchnote: here.

The homepage for spyfall.app

Critical Play — Spyfall

April 9, 2024

Game: Spyfall Creator: Alexandr Ushan Platform: Web App Target audience: Broad audience of teens, adults, and possibly some children. Group of 4+  Spyfall seems…

A character stands in front of a chest and a "backup magazine," which they are prompted to pick up. A timer in the upper left-hand corner shows that about a minute has elapsed, and that the current difficulty is "Easy."

MDA — Risk of Rain 2

April 8, 2024

The first thing you notice when playing Risk of Rain is a difficulty indicator. Easy, Medium, and Hard are arrayed along a timer, which…

Mind map of the formal elements of game design (Inaccessible)

Mindmap – Formal Elements of Game Design

April 4, 2024

Link to my mindmap here.

Introduce Yourself — Seamus Allen

April 3, 2024

Hi All! I’m Seamus — I use he/they pronouns. I’m a huge fan of tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons! There’s just something…

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

  • The Letter
  • CS199 Final Reflection
  • Critical Play: Games of Chance & Addiction
  • Critical Play: Puzzles
  • (no title)

Recent Comments

  • Jinhyo Huh on Final Reflection – Leo Sui
  • Jinhyo Huh on Jinhyo – Final Class Reflection
  • ban on CS199 Reflection – Rat King
  • Christina Wodtke on Read, Write, Play: Final Essay – Krystal Li
  • Christina Wodtke on CS 399 Reflection: Hotpot! – Krystal Li

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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