Game Design Commons^™

Pachisi Go! Making A Video Game Older Than Writing, Tony C.E. Lucy None

ASPIRE 2026

Pachisi Go!: Making a Video Game Older Than Writing explores the process of recreating one of the world’s oldest board games as a modern digital experience using the Godot game engine. Beginning with minimal programming knowledge, this project focused on learning GDScript, experimenting with 2D and 3D design approaches, and translating traditional game mechanics into functional systems. Through iterative development, debugging, and problem-solving, a working prototype was created while addressing challenges such as scope limitations and mechanical accuracy. Although the game was not fully completed, the project emphasizes growth through failure, demonstrating how experimentation and adaptability are essential to game …

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.

Sk8er Skull, David Norton

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Sk8r Skull is a single player video game where players must traverse the environment as a skull on a skateboard, in an effort to defeat the wizard who has stolen the rest of the skull’s body. Players must move, destroy, and grind their way through the level in order to reach the wizard. By traversing the area, players will learn the mechanics of the game, as well as some of the in-game world’s backstory. The production of Sk8r Skull was driven by examining game feel, and the “flow” state.

Floodfriend, Lauren Watson

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Floodfriend is a two-dimensional puzzle-platformer game with two main characters that are trying to navigate their way out of a cave system. The player controls both the human and the monster of the duo: the hiker responds to direct arrow key input, while the monster can only be persuaded by using the hiker’s flashlight to swim and climb to otherwise inaccessible areas. The game is equal parts a simulation and a toy, encouraging the player to try different methods of interaction to garner the results they want to see. From a design perspective, the game is centered on the push …

Gamified Learning: Applying Game Design Thinking In Education, Qiaoxin Deng

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

Gamification is an Education Strategy It has gained popularity in recent years. Gamification is a means to foster student engagement and improve their learning journeys. It's about applying game design elements in non-game contexts. This is primarily used in educational settings. Gamification of learning makes it more engaging and fun by introducing rewards, challenges, and competition. By adding rewards, challenges, and competition, gamification makes learning more interesting and interactive (2020).In this essay, I will be discussing the concept of gamification. Its advantages and disadvantages will be explored. It will also give examples, including Duolingo and Quizlet, to illustrate how it …

It’S Dangerous To Learn Alone – Play This: Video Games In Higher Education, Particularly In The Composition Classroom, Joy Sterrantino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

When people think of educational games, they often just think of ones geared towards kids: these might include spelling and vocabulary games like Scribblenauts, creative games such as Minecraft, as well as historical games such as Carmen [Sandiego]’s Ancient Caper, but according to the Entertainment Software Association in 2019, 65% of adults play video games (almost half of which are female), the average gamer is 33 years old, and 63% of all gamers are playing with others at least one hour a week (“Essential Facts” 4, 5, 8). This means that the majority of …

Go Go Ro Bo, Jordan Goodwin

Game Design

Go Go Ro Bo is a proof of concept for a runner-like game. In the game, players move Ro Bo up and down past various obstacles throughout the mall and collect gummy rats.

Cim316.2 Antville Example 1, Sae University College

Exemplars

Capstone Planning documentation for a video game.

The concept of Antville is a cooperative video game dedicated to boosting

social skills and teamwork among children. Inspired by the Young Minds

Matter survey, which reveals a gap in social skills development for kids aged

4-12 (The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020), Antville will

address these social skill deficits through game mechanics informed by

scholarly research.

Consequences Of A Dream: Interactivity And Agency Of The Reader/Player In Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Undertale, Nicholas DáVila

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this thesis, I analyze Toby Fox’s 2015 roleplaying game Undertale alongside Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My reason for doing so is to investigate the narrative structures of the two stories, how they use metanarrative, and their use of game as a narrative tool in order to showcase the narrative lineage video games like Undertale share with Wonderland. Through this investigation I wish to show that the use of games and play as a vessel for or a part of narrative structure do not exclude works like video games from posing interesting questions and challenges …

Options, Matthew C. Mata

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

Difficult choices are a part of our everyday lives, and they only get harder as time goes on. Thankfully, we get to choose what those choices are in our lives. What we don't get to choose are the consequences that follow. To share what I mean, six interactive shorts were made so that people could watch and play with the storylines in an effort to show that we are all self-motivated and have agency within us.

Athalea: Fear And Hate, Santiago Posada-Jaramillo

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Athalea: Fear and Hate is a single-player 2D role-playing video game (RPG) for PC using pixel art and a minimalistic aesthetic. Through conversations, environmental storytelling, and the main character’s own thoughts, the game explores, through a critical lens, fascist rhetoric and the way that fascists use power in order to help the player to be better equipped to properly understand how fascism operates. Different from traditional portrayals in media that tend to use an easily identifiable set of symbols and historical references, Athalea: Fear and Hate exposes fascism in a different context with the goal of making the core of …

Mushy's Escape, Maddie Knemeyer Lynch

Game Design

Mushy's Escape is a puzzle based 3D Platformer. This game is a showcase for a game development concept piece.

Spective, Andrew C. Smith

Game Design

Video Game, Andrew Smith, Puzzle Action game. Made for Fall 2023 Game Prototype class. In this game, the player must rotate the camera in order to obtain a new perspective and gain more visual information about the layout of the stage in order to avoid enemies, collect objects, and navigate and platform properly, in order to reach the end.

Entities: A Field Of Imaginary Games, Thrasyvoulos Ioannis Kalaitzidis

LSU Master's Theses

With this body of work, I am looking for visual symbols that help communicate unuttered meanings through storytelling and stimulate an affectual response to the viewer. This exploration is presented in two different forms: a surreal sculptural installation and a board game. The installation consists of large-scale sculptures made from light and soft materials (polyurethane foam, plastic waste, paper) that are available to move inside the gallery, while the board game is presented as a set of 3D prints with instructions on how the participants can play it. The materials used in the installation suggest a way to transform waste …

For|Rest, Jes Klass

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In for/rest, players navigate a world built around an interpretation of the liminal space of grief. Glitching, blinking roots are all around an otherwise grey, empty space and as players destroy these roots they gradually resaturate the landscape. Each time a root is destroyed, the player will watch it disintegrate in front of them while some form of animal or plant spawns in the root’s stead. On rare occasions, instead of a plant or animal, a human will phase into the world as a root disintegrates. This human, Charlie, roams around the forest and offers the player a chance to …

Jewish Time Jump: New York, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Jewish Time Jump: New York (Gottlieb & Ash, 2013) is a place-based mobile augmented reality game and simulation that takes the form of a situated documentary. Players take on the role of time traveling reporters tracking down a story “lost to time” to bring back to their editor at the Jewish Time Jump Gazette. The game is played in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City. Players’ iPhones become their time traveling device and companion. Based on the player’s GPS location, players receive digital images from their location from over a hundred years in the past as well …

Mixed Logical And Probabilistic Reasoning In The Game Of Clue, Todd W. Neller, Ziqian Luo

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Neller and Ziqian Luo ’18 presented a means of mixed logical and probabilistic reasoning with knowledge in the popular deductive mystery game Clue. Using at-least constraints, we more efficiently represented and reasoned about cardinality constraints on Clue card deal knowledge, and then employed a WalkSAT-based solution sampling algorithm with a tabu search metaheuristic in order to estimate the probabilities of unknown card places.

How Representation Of Game Information Affects Player Performance, Matthew Paul Bryan

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The goal of this small experiment was to see if it could be determined whether or not user interface design and the way information is portrayed in a game can affect a player’s performance in that game. During this study, 26 anonymous participants selected one design of a timer from three different categories to be used in a simple, objective-based game. 10 different participants were then run through three levels of that game, with each level corresponding to a different version of timer. The amount of objectives completed were recorded, as well as their thoughts on which version they preferred …

The Effects Of Video Games On Human Intelligence, Lifeng Yuan, Wenxiang Hu

ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies

With the help of rapidly growing electronics industry offering more affordable electronic gaming devices, an increasing number of people have stepped into the realm of video games and as a result, playing video games has become part of life for many to some extent. While the majority of people are embracing the fun and the thrill that video games have brought about, a handful of people are still holding relatively negative opinions on video games, thinking that playing video game is just a waste of time and money. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite. It has proved that …

Testing An Original Story In Multiple Artistic Mediums, Alexander F. Morton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Story is one of the oldest forms of communication between humans. Various methods have enhanced and updated the Art in a variety of ways since the concept was created. In modern times, a story can exist in multiple mediums because of the variations that humans use today to tell stories. I present an artistic project that will show my development of an original universe, plot, and characters into a storyline introduction for enjoyable purposes. The belief was that these ideas I created could succeed in multiple formats, but I would need to narrow it down and test what I …

The Tower: Constructing A 3d Scene, John W. Wesson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis describes the process of creating a 3D environment from the initial concept to the final scene. It discusses relevant research into new technology in the field of real-time rendering, including Physically Based Rendering and a synced normals workflow. It examines how the goals of the project changed over time and how the associated challenges were resolved. Conclusions are drawn about what practices were most successful, and how the development process could be improved.

Pilot Study Of A Kinect-Based Video Game To Improve Physical Therapy Treatment, Jacob Samuel Brown

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

Burnie is an exergame being developed at Purdue University and is used in this study. Burnie was developed using the Unity3D engine and OpenNI to interface with the Xbox Kinect. This study looked at how gesture intensity affected perceived enjoyment and perceived fatigue of the game. The results of the study could not reject the null hypothesis. Gesture intensity does not have a significant relationship to perceived enjoyment and perceived fatigue. This result means that future studies can alter the gesture intensity of the game Burnie without adversely affecting the player’s enjoyment and fatigue levels.