The Art of Play.
A free game-design course in six connected lessons, with small interactive experiments and a project of your own. Start at the beginning, or pick up the question you are working on.
Begin with lesson one →
Set aside 45–60 minutes per lesson, plus time to build and test your prototype. Keep a notebook. Each exercise gives you something to use in the next lesson.
We will follow an original example, a tiny courier game called Night Mail. You can use its problems to practice, or apply every exercise to your own idea. The lessons work with paper, code, visual tools, or AI assistance.
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What makes a game worth playing?
Describe the experience you want a player to have.
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Give the player a decision worth making
Identify a dominant option and an uninformed guess.
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Small rules, surprising games
Trace how a rule changes behavior and player experience.
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Teach the game without a wall of instructions
Separate learning a control from applying it under pressure.
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Build the smallest thing that can teach you something
Choose a prototype that can answer a specific design question.
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Watch a player. Change your mind. Make a better game.
Run a focused session without coaching every decision.
A course you can put to work.
These are original lessons informed by game-design practice and literature, including Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun and the MDA framework. Sources are linked where they inform a lesson. The experiments are for learning, not scores that claim to measure fun.
How we write and check the lessons →