Game Design Theories Exercises

Student works about theoretical game design, most of them are group works and done in 12 to 20 hours.

Nova Religio - Reinterpretation of the Hopscotch Game

The goal was to reinterpret the game through the concept of Critical Play (by Mary Flanagan). We had the added angle of making a Hopscotch game about religion and cheating.
The tool used for this exercises were : Unplaying, Reskining and Rewriting.

The game we created is a package to sell in stores, within it there is everything you need to start your own religion :  A big notebook, small ones, pens and chalk.

The hopping mechanic funnel you through verses and rules of this new religion and at the end of you journey you can add you own writings to the central book of it.
But if you don't agree with the mainline of the religion (by belief or by practice) you can start you own branch and write the start of you own book, diverting from the central stem. 

By this means the game tries to start a dialogue about sacred texts and how they are rewritten and reused to infer new meaning or adapt and also how religious beliefs are a consensually accepted construct that everyone can add to.

Overwatch Ana - Reinterpretation of Ana's character

Here we are again in a reinterpretation exercise but this time with the works of Guy Debord and Gil J,Wolman in mind asking why and what is reinterpreted.
With the character of Ana we wanted to analyse the limits of her design, would it be in its representation, its gameplay or its story and try another design according to what we identified at lacking. 

(The full analysis is in the pdf)

Unmanned - Procedural rhetoric analysis

This exercise was the dive deep into a game by La Molleindustria and identify then analyse its rhetorical elements would it be in its subtext, its aesthetic, its gameplay choices or evoked metaphors. We tried to link them to stylistic devices to see what the game could infer, willingly or not.

Keep it together - Rational Game Design 

This last one is by far the worst of all, it is objectively bad. It was my first real game design document. I put it in this collection to see the evolution and work done since. 

It's an exercise on Rational Game Design (RGD), the goal is to take apart a game idea to its smallest parts, its atomical parameters and use them to create a matrix to theorise challenges to different player's aptitudes. 

It's a basic but central exercise that I put in use in every game design I do now, would it be as a sketch on a napkin or in big excel tables.