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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

Category: 377G: Serious Games

P2: Wild Space, Playtest #3

October 21, 2025

Wild Space, the anthropomorphic animal alien dating simulator has been coming along nicely for the past couple of days. Here are some of the…

Read & Play: The Rhetoric of Video Games

October 21, 2025

Spoilers Ahead! (Depression Quest) To better understand narrative architecture and interactive fiction, I played Depression Quest on a Chrome web-browser on my Windows computer. Depression…

P2: Map, premise, project plan – Krystal Li

October 20, 2025

Premise: In this game, Vincent, a man who is on the verge of a divorce has a fight with his wife before being hit…

P2: Playtest Prototype

October 20, 2025

Playtester: Same as last time (see other notes), CS coterm student. During Playtest: Playtester liked the “improved” assets Player tried to “break” the experience…

P2: Premise, Map, Plan

October 20, 2025

Premise In this story, our character wakes up and wants to finish up their to-do list. We have to walk our dog and visit…

Premise, Map, and Project Plan – Angela Mao

October 20, 2025

Premise  Player Role The player is Bowser, a purple Jellycat hippo who lives at the Paper Source in Stanford’s Town and Country. He is…

P2: Playtest – Krystal Li

October 20, 2025

My game, tentatively titled Undying Love,  is a narrative-driven IF game where players take on the role of Vincent, a middle-aged man on the…

P2: Map, Premise, Project Plan

October 19, 2025

Hello everyone! Here are some notes I’ve made in an effort to try and flesh out + build the foundations for my P2. I’m…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture by Ngoc

October 16, 2025

Game Design as Narrative Architecture Sketchnotes Game Overview and Target Audience “I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator” is a…

P2 Tiny Prototype Notes – Leyth Toubassy

October 16, 2025

Tester: Renee – Stanford CS Coterm During Playtest: Jokingly predicted something bad would happen Liked the dog Was surprised by the twist Post Playtest…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 16, 2025

Tiny Prototype My prototype was a small segment of my game, consisting of you naming yourself, interacting with a wandering man who is interested…

Tiny Playable Prototype – Krystal Li

October 16, 2025

I made a tiny playable prototype for my game that transports a middle-aged divorced man named Vincent into the world of Romeo and Juliet….

P2: Wild Space, Playtest #1

October 15, 2025

For P2, I’m developing an interactive fiction involving dating anthropomorphic alien animals after the world has seemingly ended. Today, my game got playtested (see…

P2: Tiny Playable Prototype

October 15, 2025

For context, you can find my prototype that I printed in class here.  Feedback from Playtest The choices could be less obvious  Introduce some…

Read & Play: Game Design as Narrative Architecture – Krystal Li

October 15, 2025

For this assignment, I decided to play Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC), which is a visual novel game created by Team Salvato in 2017,…

Sketchnote Zinester

October 14, 2025

Here’s my sketchnote for the reading. Chapter 1 is on the first page, and Chapter 7 is on the second. Sketchnote Zinester – Leyth…

Sketchnote: Rise of the Video Game Zinesters – Krystal Li

October 13, 2025

High Quality version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pGJ86Kd1roDdSSRe0TWWu5WCEpIOpLtf/view?usp=sharing    

Post-Dinner Clarity – P1 Reflection (amaru)

October 12, 2025

alt title: Food Coma: A P1 Reflection P1 was an absolutely wild ride for me. My memories of 247G are still fresh since I…

P1: Reflection – Angela Mao

October 12, 2025

Creating my first educational game, American Dream, was a fun and rewarding experience. I really loved getting to research more about the immigration process,…

P1 Reflection on 1792 – Krystal Li

October 12, 2025

I was part of Group 2, and we made the game 1792, (prev. Let Them Eat Cake). When our group first got to talking…

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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

  • P2: Wild Space, Playtest #3
  • Read & Play: The Rhetoric of Video Games
  • P2: Playtest prototype
  • P2: Playtest_Prototype_MarielleZheng
  • P2: Map, premise, project plan – Krystal Li

Recent Comments

  • Unlocking New Levels: Challenges in Dress-Up Games - Outfits Game on Pixel Runway — Or, What Games Teach Fashion‑Tech About Joyful Retention
  • Christina Wodtke on Sketchnote 1 — amaru
  • Christina Wodtke on Sketchnotes: MDAO by Ngoc
  • Among Us Features Gameplay Download Guide | GridBox on Among Us: Critical Play of Social Deduction
  • Hollow Knight and Silksong: Redefining Game Narrative - FizzClick.com | Your Source for Business, Technology & Entertainment News on Hollow Knight, Metroidvanias, and Storytelling

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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