Alex Designs Games

Thanks to a tweet or X post, I learned that New York City residents have free access to classes on Coursera.com. I jumped at the opportunity for some self-paced learning. I really enjoy hands on learning so I spent the last month or so taking a course titled Intro to Game Design. The course is part of a larger program titled, Game Design: Art and Concepts Specialization.

If you’re interested in online learning, I highly recommend giving Coursera a look. There are all kinds of classes available for anything you want to learn really. If you’re a NYC resident click here for more information to get started.

Intro To Game Design

I must say I really enjoyed this course. It really helped me synthesize some knowledge I already had about game design and apply it to creating a simple board game. The course took about five weeks to complete and contained four homework assignments. Part of the homework assignments was to critique other students board game and incorporate peer feedback into your own game.

The board game had to be playable on a single sheet of paper using only six sided dice. Each week we were tasked with using peer feedback to iterate on our game or create a new one. I decided to iterate on the first version of my game throughout the course.

Dungeon Run v1

The first iteration of the game is the simplest. The player rolls the dice and moves their game piece around the board. The object of the game is to find the treasure. Some of the space have instructions to make gameplay more or less challenging. I was watching Goblin Slayer as I created this board hence the presence of goblins and rats. The spaces on the game board were inspired by common RPG gameplay stats.

Dungeon Run v2

The second week, we learned about rules that define gameplay, how players are able to discover the rules, and balancing gameplay. The assignment was to refine the rules of your game and incorporate any feedback. The feedback I received for Dungeon Run was to make it more aesthetically pleasing. I don’t think I did quite a good job making it more aesthetically pleasing. I’m nobodies artist haha. I got rid of the handwritten instructions and switched to text. I also added a new rule to a game space, LUCK UP, that allows the player to teleport to any blank space on the board to balance the game a bit more.

Dungeon Run v3

During week three we learned to create a narrative to make gameplay more compelling and the different ways stories can drive a game. To this end, I wrote a short paragraph to make the game sound more exciting. I believed that the spaces on the game board helped drive the narrative of Dungeon Run. I added a new space that allow the player to decide the direction they move in.

I also spent some time incorporating more peer feedback. A piece of feedback I received was that it could take too long to finish the game. I addressed this feedback by creating two new rules on the game spaces. The first rule gives the player a second opportunity to find the treasure. The second rule gives the player a shortcut to bypass five spaces on the board.

Dungeon Run v4

The fourth and final week focused on creating a multiplayer game and non playable characters. Dungeon Run already had NPC in the form of enemies, the rats and goblins.

To make this a multiplayer game, I simply revised the rules to allow for a second player. I also added a new space, Fire Ball, that gives players the ability to send each other back one space.

What I Would Do Differently

If I were to take this course again I would use some online tools to make a more aesthetically pleasing game board. I would also double the game board in size. The increase in spaces would allow for more varied gameplay and more creative rules in the game spaces.

What’s Next

The next course in the series is Story and Narrative Development for video games. I’m very excited for this course as stories are one of the things I enjoy most about video games. I believe it’ll be very helpful in allowing me to flesh out some of my ideas for the game I want to design and create.

Thanks for reading!