In this website, I will showcase my ideas in game design by presenting three essays and four games I made to accompany them. I split the website into three sections: a section about puzzles and strategy, a section about keeping games interesting by continually adding new content, and a section about making games contingent to a theme or genre. In the webpages of the games, I provide the rulebook and give an evaluation that were both written immediately after playtesting. I hope what I have to say interests you. Feel free to play my games yourself.
This website was written as an english project in my schooling. To get a better understanding of me, the author, or the whole project, check out The About Page.
Puzzles and Strategy
This first concept is the most important concept in my opinion; It is the concept of good puzzles and strategy. Because this concept is so nuanced, I approach this concept in my essay, Elements of a Bad Puzzle, by showing three elements that make a puzzle experience less fun. I feel my game, Territory Control Game, shows off how different positions throughout the duration of the game keeps strategizing fun. From the beginning to the middle of the game, your goal is to establish solid frontlines. Then, strategies shift as it becomes more dire to fill in the area you control for your chance to win the game. The game offers plenty of varied tactics to use at any point of the game.
Keeping Games Interesting
For this second part, I toy with the idea of how continually adding new ideas makes gaming exciting. In my essay The Adventure of Games, I give many examples showing how developers add new content to a game to keep the experience interesting. The game I created to show off this idea involves a board made of cards that gets replaced when bombs explode too close to it. This keeps the board state interesting. The game, in the state that I show it, is too spiteful and rude for my taste. But if you want a game that allows you to gain monopolies and trap your opponent in corners, check out Bomb Game.
Contingency to a Theme or Genre
For this last concept, I talk about contingency. It is the idea that some design elements are dependent on other factors, like theme or genre. The two games I created around this concept are contingent on the format of Tarot cards. I set out to remake card games that were already made with the exception that it would be played with Tarot cards. In making the first game, I thought all I needed to do to fit the format was to add luck elements and themes, so I made Tarot Tennessee for Two. I realized how difficult it was to organize the cards by suit and how long it took to play with all the cards, so I wanted to remake a game played by at least four people that didn’t involve organizing the cards by suit. I decided to recreate Scum (for Tarot Scum) because of those reasons and because of how the roles could be decided by a card draw. The essay I have for this section is about how the undo button doesn’t make sense in the videogame solitaire genre: The Undoing of Solitaire.