Syllabus

• Week 1

  Learn to play games

  • Introduce

    Through this course, we hope to help you master practical game creation capabilities, gradually transform your creative ideas into experiential works, and further develop complete and actionable game plans.

  • Understanding Games

    In this session, I’ll walk you through the idea of “games” from two angles, so you can quickly get a clear, big-picture understanding.

  • Getting Started with Game Design

    Imagine this: You’re new to game development. You come up with what you think is an amazing gameplay mechanic, and you even write a detailed design document. But then… you realize you can’t actually tell if it’s fun.

• Week 2

  Understanding Games

  • What exactly is a game?

    When we recommend our favourite games to friends, we often encounter a question: how can we introduce the game as briefly as possible?

  • Game System Breakdown

    When we attempt to understand the systems of different types of games, we tend to use a similar approach to analyse the content they contain.

  • Other Components of a Game

    Process and Limitations

• Week 3

  Understanding Players

  • Games and Players

    As people who play games, we’re all familiar with the word “player.” And in game design, this term is absolutely central—because most games are built around the player.

• Week 4

  Shaping Experience

  • Understanding the Experience

    MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics, and it breaks down the journey from design to play into three key layers.

  • The Emotions and Feelings of Game Experience

    Today, we’re going to look at games not just as sources of entertainment, but as emotional experiences that do much more than give us quick fun.

  • From Mechanism to Experience

    In game design, everything we create—whether it’s mechanics, story, art, or code—ultimately shows up in one place: the player’s experience.

• Week 5

  Storytelling

  • Entering the Story Worlds of Games

    Does a game need to have a story? It’s something you might not have stopped to think about—even though you’ve probably played dozens (or hundreds!) of games.

  • Diverse Types of Game Narrative

    You’ll often hear terms like linear, nonlinear, branching, networked, fragmented, emergent, and more. And honestly? It’s easy to get confused.

  • Weaving Story into Experience

    In the first part of our course, we started with the basics: what narrative is, and how interactivity transforms traditional storytelling.

• Week 6

  Game Language Expression

  • Player's Game Experience

    Take a moment to think back on your own gaming experiences.

  • How to Convey the Language of a Game Through Design

    One of the biggest challenges every game designer faces is this: How do you actually get your design intent across to the player?

  • The Growth of Game Language

    When you’re just starting out in game design, one of the most important things you’ll do is keep asking: What makes a game fun? And how can I make it even more engaging?

• Week 7

  The Magic Circle

  • The Magical Magic Circle

    Have you ever noticed how, when you’re deep in a game, you can feel totally absorbed in its world?

• Week 8

  Collaborative Game Creation

  • Game Development Work

    As future game designers, you won’t just be making mechanics—you’ll be working with artists, engineers, sound designers, and more.

  • Game Teamwork and Collaboration

    Today, we’re going to take a closer look at how those teams are structured—especially in larger studios—so you can see how different roles come together to bring a game to life.

  • Experience Evaluation

    At the early stages of a project, ordinary players might struggle to objectively assess the overall feasibility and enjoyment of a game due to the incompleteness of certain elements in the game.

Who will you learn with?