A Dozen-ish Questions for Designing Your Game

I’m right at the beginning of the design process on a few different projects, one in particular in a pre-mechanical stage: I know what the game is about and roughly what you do in it, but I don’t know how or if those things will be made manifest in the rules. It’s an interesting place to be! I’ve found myself returning to some questions I often ask other people when they share work in early stages. Some of these are classics, some I learned from friends, some I adapted from screenwriting advice, some are just whatever I like to think and ask about. I like to bust them out like tools when I’m stuck on a particular design problem. The big one, which I’ll set aside here at the top, is “what is your game about?” This is often such a broad question as to be useless when applied to a specific situation, but I always find it a good reminder to ground myself and return to whatever is emotionally important about the game to me. When in doubt, “waht is your game about?” is a good question to…