DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Meaningful Play- Player interactions and the output results of those interactions must be meaningful to the player. The result could be an emotional connection with the characters, world, or meeting new friends, or a mechanical connection such as earning in-game currency, items, or experience.
Balance
- As a designer, I strive to find a balance between the risk/reward relationship in order to prevent dominant strategies.
Flow
- Create suitable challenges for a player's current abilities and accessible game assets.
- Clearly communicating the goal or task a player needs to undertake to mitigate frustration or confusion.
- Providing clear feedback for player interactions. This may range anywhere from a dialogue box to an ability animation or effect, or even a cinematic.
- Creating a sense of control within the player even when it is unclear whether the player has control or not.
Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master
- As with any game designer, I strive to create both wide and deep gameplay, giving players a series of options with a very simple ruleset and goal.
- Create a gentle learning curve to promote a safe environment for new players to learn and grow in. Gradually increase the difficulty revealing new play styles and challenges along the way building on the player's previous experience.
Reward the Player by Expanding Gameplay
- Constantly create new experiences through expanding the world, access to new abilities, tools, or weapons, and build upon the game's lore with new story elements.
Core Mechanic
- Clearly state the game's primary mechanic; what the player does the most.
- This mechanic should be simple but malleable enough that is can be added to as the game progresses.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Fun First
- Fun to design, fun to play.
Test Early, Iterate Often
- By testing early you can get a feel for if the game is fun or has the potential to become fun.
- Iterating often and testing each iteration minimizes scope creep and the reworking of entire systems.
Listen
- Actively listen to the player; hear what they are saying beyond what they are telling you.
- Take all criticism from an objective point of view and learn to find the useful information within all the criticism.
Interesting Decisions
- Put players in the position to create interesting decisions using the tools that are provided them. Examples of this are skill trees and narrative branches.
Inform the Theme Thru Mechanics and Vise-Versa
- Whether you start with a mechanic or with a theme they should both inform each other.
