Game Design

A designer's reference, written from play. Use it to think about what to design and why it works, not how to implement it in an engine (that is godot). It carries a cross-game pattern catalog distilled from 16 dissected games, plus the durable design frameworks, and a stance: opinionated but anti-dogmatic. Both work, for different games. Pick a stance, and be ready to argue with this one.

This fires whenever game design is on the table: a new concept, a mechanic that feels off, a rework, a balance question, "is this fun / too grindy / a dominant strategy", or the agent making its own design calls while building a game. The depth lives in the OKF bundle in references/; this file is the procedure.

The lens: how to read any game or mechanic

Run anything you are analyzing through these axes (the full method is in method.md):

• Iconic mechanic. The one phrase that names this game's mechanical identity.
• Core dialectic. The single tension it restates at every scale ("risk vs reward, fractally"; "greed vs gold"; "friction over convenience").
• Macro loop. The cycle the player actually runs, moment to moment to session.
• Mechanic systems. Each major system, described neutrally.
• Design tensions. What the developers wrestled with, in their own words. Dev quotes are gold.
• Ludonarrative resonance. Describe the loop without the fiction. Does it still read as a story about this character? This is a lens to hold against any mechanic, not a goal to force.
• Patterns. The reusable design moves it shares with other games (see patterns.md).
• Lessons. What is worth stealing, and at what cost.

Commands

Invoke as /game-design <command> [target].

Design from the experience down, not the feature up

The load-bearing framework is MDA: Mechanics give rise to Dynamics, which produce Aesthetics (the felt experience). The designer authors only mechanics, but the player meets the game in the opposite order, Aesthetics first. So start from the experience you want, derive the dynamics that produce it, then build the smallest mechanics that yield those dynamics. You cannot code "fun" directly; you locate the broken feedback loop and tune the mechanical lever. Frameworks, the eight kinds of fun, and the motivation models are in frameworks.md.

Core moves

The most transferable moves from the catalog (principles.md has the full set with caveats):

• Pick one dialectic and restate it fractally. Every screen should be the same trade-off in a new costume. New players learn the game once and apply it everywhere.
• Build on one verb, then deepen it. Make every enemy, level, and item pose a question about one core verb, and let upgrades extend it rather than add parallel ones. One polished ability beats five mediocre ones, though the verb-is-everything bet lives or dies on enemy and level authoring.
• Meta-progression unlocks variety, not power. The next run should be more interesting, not easier. (Power-ramp metas like Hades are the deliberate exception, for games that want you to eventually win.)
• Costed power forces commitment. Run-defining loot with a real drawback gives each run a direction; uncosted upgrades flatten every run into the same kitchen sink.
• Loadout as budget. Power lives inside a fixed budget (slots, points, cells, hand size); more of one means less of another. A small slot count over a large pool produces identity.
• Telegraph honestly. Show what is coming so combat is a decision, not a coin flip, and never let a telegraph lie. A lying telegraph is worse than none.
• Subtract. A tighter, smaller kit usually beats a bigger one. Make skipping a real option and removing as rewarding as adding.

The loop stack and the flow corridor

A core loop is act → feedback → reward → repeat, nested by timescale: moment-to-moment, session, progression, meta. The output of an inner loop is the fuel of the outer one. Two tests: the bare moment-to-moment loop must be fun stripped of all progression, and every loop must feed a larger one or it dead-ends. Keep difficulty in the flow corridor, where challenge tracks rising skill: the flow channel, Koster's "fun is learning", the sawtooth difficulty curve, and "fair challenge" all describe the same band. Detail in frameworks.md.

Critique smells

When a design feels off, look for these (detection signals and fixes in critique.md):

• Dominant strategy. One line always wins, so the choice is not a choice. Make it situational, add a counter, or fix the incentive (players will find any crack).
• No opportunity cost. The player can take everything; nothing is sacrificed. Add a budget.
• Hollow loop. The reward does not feed the next tier, or the feedback is illegible. Close the loop.
• Treadmill / power creep. Numbers rise but nothing changes; new content devalues old. Prefer horizontal options and capability over magnitude.
• Complexity over depth. Rules to learn outnumber the decisions they create. Cut or fold; depth comes from interaction, not addition.
• Ethics smell. Engagement engineered against the player's interest (appointment grind, monetized randomness, social-graph extraction). The test: would the player have more fun fulfilling this contingency than not?

Stance

Opinionated, grounded in play, anti-dogmatic. Resonance is diagnostic, not prescriptive: honestly-orthogonal games (Slay the Spire, Balatro) work because they do not force the fiction. Scale the math to your team, do not scale up: a 4x4 grid is enough, a small world needs ten points of interest, not a hundred. Design more than you ship and prune ruthlessly. Never em or en dashes.

Reference bundle

• method.md — the dissection lens, the concept-page anatomy, the resonance diagnostic.
• patterns.md — the cross-game pattern catalog (19 patterns, by category, with exemplars and pitfalls).
• principles.md — the load-bearing design moves worth stealing, with their caveats.
• frameworks.md — MDA, core loops and skill atoms, flow, player motivation, depth vs complexity, game feel.
• systems.md — economies, feedback loops, balance, randomness, reward schedules, and the ethics line.
• critique.md — the design-review smell catalog and the rework procedure.

Source

Distilled from Sascha Becker's game-mechanics knowledge base (16 games dissected, 19 cross-game concept pages), grounded in the standard design literature cited throughout the bundle (MDA, Koster, Cook, Schell, Swink, Adams and Dormans, Schreiber, Sirlin).