Game Design Commons^™

From The Pages To The Gaming Table: Designing A Homebrew System To Adapt A Book Series Into A Ttrpg, Ricardo Victoria Uribe, Nazario Robles Bastida, Chris Birmingham

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

Adapting media properties, in particular fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, has been a staple of the development of tabletop role-playing games since their inception. Different properties, ranging from Lord of the Rings to Call of Cthulhu and everything in between has been undergoing this process. Developing an indie game based on indie and self-published books can be used as a promoting tool on overlapping audiences, which is the case for the selected book series for this design exercise. This paper has the aim of sharing these developing experiences during the early stages of creating a quick start guide supplement …

Platforming For Circuit Education, Grady Oliver Schneider

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project was to provide an alternative for students being introduced to resistive circuits. As a freshman in electrical engineering (transferred to computer engineering), I saw the struggles of other freshman to grasp the conceptual basics of circuits. While there’s lots of guides to circuit education, I think many of them fall short of being both engaging and teaching the intuition behind circuits. A lot of the more advanced concepts in circuits depends on the basic intuition of KCL, KVL, and Ohm’s Law. While there’s several basic techniques (such as voltage divider, current divider, and mesh current …

The Vampire In Video Games: Narrative Structures, Game Mechanics, And Cultural Significance, Ricardo Longo Minervino

Theses

This thesis examines how vampires are represented in video games by analyzing narrative structures, game mechanics, and cultural meaning. Using the existing games of Vampyr, V Rising, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, The Sims 4: Vampires, Skyrim: Dawnguard, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Bloodlines 2, the study identifies which design strategies successfully create an engaging and believable vampire experience for the player, as well as determining which development decisions could hurt the experience for players. Using formalism, symbolism, feminist methodology, and player reception theory, this thesis argues that vampire games function best when players confront moral dilemmas, experience consequences for feeding …

Mozgus, Damian Cerda, Madison Lopez

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The indie game market is flooded with genre experiments, yet few successfully combine fast-paced action with meaningful strategic decision-making. Our project aims to fill this gap by creating a game that fuses top-down action combat with resource-management tycoon mechanics. We found that in many games, the management phases lack mechanical stakes. Our goal was to intertwine these systems so that choices made in one phase meaningfully impact the other.

Crux: Exploring Imperialism And Resistance Through Role-Playing Games, Devon Gronka

Institute for the Humanities Master's Papers, Projects, and Capstones

This is a game about power. The game is a Role-Playing Game, or RPG. As with nearly all RPGs, the game presents the players with choices about how their characters will interact with each other and with the world around them, and these interactions are woven together to more or less form a plot. However, oftentimes in life there are no good choices available, and there is no win state outside of what we might determine for ourselves.

The game is a social experiment. While playing a game, a player takes in information in a very different manner than when …

Enhancing Facial Expressiveness For Games Through Procedural Animation, Abhijit Varanasi

All Theses

Facial animation is one of the most important parts of bringing characters to life in video games and virtual experiences. This thesis explores a new approach to creating more expressive facial animations using procedural techniques and blended facial performance for more flexibility. The project uses FACS (Facial Action Coding System), which breaks down facial expressions into small, measurable muscle movements. By building a facial rig based on these muscle units, the character’s face can be animated in a way that reflects real human emotion. The animation in this work is not just pre-recorded, though it can respond in real-time to …

Guiding The Story World: A Comparison Of Diegetic Cues In A Snow White Vr Narrative Game, Jiayi Xu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Virtual reality (VR) narrative games must guide players through complex story worlds without undermining immersion, yet prior work rarely compares different forms of in-world guidance under tightly controlled conditions. Designers routinely mix diegetic text, character behavior, and environmental motion, but it remains unclear how these cue families differentially shape cognitive load, task performance, and narrative experience when they convey the same instruction.

This thesis investigates how three common diegetic cue types—diegetic text, non-verbal gestures from a non-player character, and environmental motion and highlights—affect players in a first-person VR retelling of the Snow White story. In a between-subjects laboratory study, each …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Penguin Run, Lillian Mantz

Game Design

Penguin Run is a flappy bird inspired platformer. The goal is to collect coins and avoid the ice spikes.

Unchained, Shawn Roberts Jr

Game Design

No abstract provided.

Pearanormal Reporter, Zakayla Bailey

Game Design

Pearanormal Reporter is a mystery/horror game with a fun twist. Play as a paranormal reporter, Peary the Pear, to figure out what happened at Fruitington Manor. Explore the manor to find clues about the suspect, location and cursed item used. Get all information correct to win the game. Just be careful of the evil Orange Entity that roams the manor. Game created for GAM 56800. Built in Unity.

Jumpstart Version0.1, Peter Brauninger

Game Design

Game Prototype for Learning the development of a full game

Dungeon Escape, Andrew Begemann

Game Design

This game was developed during a GAM 56800 course taken in the first half of the 2025 school year. The game prototype features a player that moves though a procedurally generating dungeon collecting potions and fending off enemies until finding the key to the portal that lets them leave the dungeon. The whole game development process was followed, from game design document creation to compiling an installer/uploading to itch.io, as an in-depth study. Free assets were used from the unity assets store and chatGPT was used occasionally to supplement coding/scripting needs. The player character was modeled specifically for unity animation …

Aliens Over Earth, Stephen D. Ragsdale

Game Design

Welcome to Aliens Over Earth! In this classic style platformer game, you play as an alien invading Earth for resources necessary to save her planet! You get to fly around in an alien saucer and search for the mysterious blueprint book, while defending against guided missile launchers, and collecting satellite dishes that have the materials the alien requires. But don’t be too careless in your pursuit of saving your planet because there are still Earth’s defenses and they are very capable and will not hesitate to take you down. Although if your ship gets overwhelmed and destroyed by the encroaching …

The Last Werewolf: An Interactive Narrative About Bipolar Disorder, Rebecca Kerr

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

The Last Werewolf is an interactive narrative game exploring lived experiences of bipolar disorder through metaphor and emotional design. Drawing on the creator’s personal perspective, the game uses cyclical transformation as a lens for understanding mood episodes and identity fragmentation. The showcase presentation examined how mechanics and narrative structure were used to embody bipolar experiences, aiming to foster empathy and nuanced mental health representation in games. By integrating creative practice with research, The Last Werewolf demonstrates how independent games can meaningfully communicate complex psychological realities through interactive storytelling.

Draft Card Battler, Brian Moore

Theses

This project investigates how design transparency and player interaction mechanics can enhance emotional connection and strategic depth in competitive digital card game environments. Draft Card Battler transforms traditional sequential turn-based Trading Card Game (TCG) gameplay into a structured round-based system featuring asymmetric card-play patterns (1-2-2-1) and simultaneous combat resolution. Beginning with a physical card game prototype, the project evolved through iterative design and digital implementation, informed by research in social capital theory and player psychology. Through reflective playtesting and technical development, this study explores whether visibility, pacing, and commitment mechanics foster trust, fairness, and cooperation alongside competitive tension. The implementation …

Igda Foundation Alumni Weekend: Multiclassing For Better Leadership, Matthew Dyet

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This talk was presented at the IGDA Foundation Alumni Weekend, an annual event that is run by and for recipients of the IGDA Foundation scholarship. The talk covered the fundamentals of leadership through the lens of multiclassing as covered in my book, Great Games Need Great Leaders.

Benedictine Art And Design: How Color Psychology Can Positively Influence Department Enrollment, Claire Pauline Fink

Theses

This thesis examines how design strategies informed by color psychology and experimental aesthetics can be used to strengthen the visual identity and recruitment efforts of the Benedictine College Art & Design Department (BCAD). Following the recent addition of Graphic Design as a major and the department’s name change in 2021, there has been a noticeable gap in public awareness and printed promotional materials tailored to prospective students. Grounded in theoretical frameworks, such as D. E. Berlyne’s optimal arousal theory, and supported by survey responses from current Art & Design students, this project identifies key needs in marketing to prospective students. …

La Representación Del Sistema Nocional De La Estructura Bélica En Videojuegos De Multiplataforma: Una Discusión Semiótica, Alfonso Rincón Vaquero, Edgar Ávila González

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

En este estudio de reflexión discutimos la manera en que los videojuegos de guerra multiplataforma potencialmente refuerzan estructuras de poder dominantes en la actualidad. Para ello, recurrimos a la semiótica (Eco, 1977) y, particularmente a la teoría de la segmentación de la cultura y producción de sentidos de González (2012), por medio de la cual contemplamos a los videojuegos como subespacios de la cultura que proporcionan visibilidades específicas sobre el mundo. Asimismo, nos apoyamos brevemente en la concepción del poder establecida por Michel Foucault (1978), pues llama la atención su concepción sobre las relaciones de poder como una red productiva …

An Interactive Walkthrough Of Richard Kostelanetz’S Library, Martin Glick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My project utilizes the visual novel game engine Ren’Py to create an embodied virtual walkthrough of Richard Kostelanetz’s personal library. Kostelanetz is a pioneering avante-garde artist, critic, and anthologist whose work spans multiple decades and artistic practices. This interactive experience introduces users to the astounding collection of 25,000 books that Kostelanetz has amassed in Ridgewood, Queens over his decades of publishing avant-garde literature. While scholars might be familiar with his anthologies such as Scenarios: Scripts to Perform (1980) and Texts-Sound Texts (1980), my project allows users to browse through sample pages of his original “Book Art”.

This New Media Object …

Gamifit, Sishu Wu

Masters Theses

How can we make fitness feel more like raising a pet than checking off a chore?

Gamifit is a playful system that helps beginners build exercise habits by blending AR fitness pets (Fitimals) with a simple physical reminder device (The Dock). Instead of tracking numbers and steps, it focuses on emotional motivation—your Fitimal eats, rests, and grows based on your workout consistency. Skip too many days, and they might get sick... or even leave.

This project uses gamification to bring short-term joy into a long-term challenge, creating a softer, kinder fitness journey—one that feels fun, forgiving, and actually worth sticking …

Terraincraft: Automated Land-Cover–Driven Terrain Generation For Marine Robot Simulations, Xinyue Liang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

From self-driving cars navigating city streets to all-terrain vehicles tackling rugged landscapes, recent leaps in robotic autonomy due to fast pace development in deep learning are reshaping how machines interact with the real world. However, autonomy in the aquatic environment is still limited, due to difficulty in testing and unavailability of realistic simulation environments.

In this project, we aim to create an automated system that simplifies the processes of creating synthetic datasets for marine robots navigation training tasks. We achieved this through a land cover map controlled terrain generation. Our goal is to provide an automatic terrain generation system that …

How Kirby’S Return To Dream Land Deluxe Subverts Narrative Expectations, Kelley I. Hale

Aurora

The Kirby series has been around for over 30 years, and very little has been done to research it. This is a shame, as I believed (and still do believe) the series has a lot to offer in terms of research. For this paper, I analyzed Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, a Switch remake of the Wii game Kirby's Return to Dream Land. I analyzed the cutscenes found within the game using fantasy theme criticism. I did this to explore how the game subverts narrative expectations, as well as show that Kirby games have value when it comes to …

One Can Only Dream, Sophia V. Yacca

Theses and Dissertations

One Can Only Dream is an interactive installation in which players are invited to navigate a liminal, dream-like game, engage with a branching series of questions, and introspect upon the relationships between unconscious expression, conscious self-perception, and the inherent difficulty of depicting, sharing, and understanding subconscious thought.

Rooted in both my personal experience with a rare neurophysiological condition and in my desire to create, this project examines dreams not only as a medical and cultural phenomenon, but also as a means to form identity, reflect trauma, and inspire creativity. Drawing from modern interactive storytelling and my lived experiences, this work …

Coffee Bindings, M. Ermolenko

Theses and Dissertations

Coffee Bindings is a multi-media interactive installation weaving themes of history, memory, death, and spaces that no longer exist through the lens of coffee readings and a mixture of physical and digital media. By navigating ghost spaces (spaces/places that used to exist but don’t anymore), and looking at survival through three time periods, Coffee Bindings jumps through liminal time and space, navigating the Armenian Genocide of 1915, the ethnic cleansing and displacement of Armenians from Artsakh in 2020-2024, while also tying them to personal family history with the death of my father and the loss of the physical space of …

On The Hexgame, Corwin Jones

Mathematical Sciences Technical Reports (MSTR)

The SOMA Cube has been studied by mathematicians for a number of decades, but so far methods for solving three-dimensional space-filling puzzles like the SOMA cube remain numerical; we do not have a means to predict the number of solutions to SOMA-like puzzles. We present a two-dimensional puzzle that shares certain features of the SOMA Cube, with the hope that it will be a more convenient object of study for future research into space-filling/space-covering puzzles.

How Conceptual Artists Create Fictional And Immersive Worlds, Rachel C. Hollins

2025 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

When creating media for entertainment, such as animated shows, movies, video games, etc., conceptual artists utilize a process called worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is defined as the integration of fictional environments, species, props, and civilizations that create an immersive world. However, research about real world elements is often not addressed enough when creating conceptual worlds. Therefore, this creative project aims to define how conceptual artists create believable fictional worlds while showcasing the research behind the process. First, research is conducted about the real world. This includes choosing and studying the environmental, cultural, social, architectural, and biological aspects, which will act as a …

Why You're Gayhee For Jaehee: How Dating Sims Promote Queer Self-Discovery, Amira Elliby

2025 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Dating simulators are a video game sub-genre in which the player’s primary goal is to romantically pursue their favorite love interest through in-game interactions. While some dating sims present situations that encourage heterosexual female players to question, explore, and even accept possible queer identities for themselves, there is little research on what specific game elements foster this exploratory behavior. This project examines player responses and in-game content from two dating sims, Chrono Days Sim Date and Mystic Messenger, to determine which game aspects women found most helpful in encouraging them to question their own sexualities. Out of five key …

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

Artificial Intelligence In Modern Game Development, Karan Raval

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

Artificial intelligence has transformed the landscape of game development in ways early pioneers could only imagine. In my project I explore four major phases of AI evolution: classical AI methods, the rise of machine learning, the advent of transformer architectures, and a spirited debate about whether transformers truly think. To illustrate these shifts I use examples like MYCIN, which helped doctors decide treatments, and Deep Blue, which beat a world chess champion. You’ve probably lost track of time exploring an open world that adapts to your choices, right? That sense of immersion is powered by AI behind the scenes. From …