FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Design Practice case study

Choose an action game that you believe, from your own experience of playing it, is an excellent example of the genre (or use one your instructor assigns). Write a report documenting the features that place it into this genre as opposed to another one and explaining why you believe it is superior to others of its kind. Be sure to cover at least the following areas:

■ Describe each gameplay mode in a few sentences, and document the structure of the game.

■ Document the gameplay in the primary gameplay mode, including both chal­lenges and actions. For each challenge that you document, indicate what class it belongs to: physical, logical, exploration, pattern recognition, and so on.

■ Describe the user interface in the primary gameplay mode, including the camera model and interaction model. Note important indicators that appear on the screen and discuss how they improve the playing experience.

■ Indicate resources, sources, conversions, and drains in the core mechanics.

The design questions in the next section may help you to think about these issues. In your report, use screen shots to illustrate your points. End the case study with suggestions for improvement or, if you feel the game cannot be improved, sugges­tions for additional features that might be fun to have in the game.

Alternatively, choose a game that you believe is particularly bad. Do the same case study, explaining what is wrong and how it could be improved.

A case study is neither a review nor a design document; it is an analysis. You are not attempting to reverse-engineer the entire game but simply to explain how it works in a general way. Your instructor will tell you the desired scope of the assign­ment; I recommend from five to twenty pages.