I am learning game design by building with a tool I made. It turns a recipe of game design patterns
into a small playable prototype. I play it, tell the game's AI assistant what I felt, and it builds
the next version.
A copy from 15 October 2026: two games and their real chats. Building is off.
Patterns623 from the catalog of Björk and Holopainen, with the catalog's own links: which pattern can cause which. Time Pressure can cause Tension.Patterns in Game Design, 2005, and its wiki
Layerseach pattern sits on one layer of MDA: mechanics are the rules put in by hand, dynamics happen in play, aesthetics are what the player feelsHunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek, 2004
Recipea theme from the Ludum Dare game jam, a target feeling, 3 to 9 patterns, the one action the player repeatsa dice button builds a random one along the links
Builderan AI agent (now Claude Sonnet), run from the command line, writes one HTML page: a grey game on a 700×500 canvas with 3 to 7 knobs for its main numbersfrom 30 seconds to 4 minutes a version
Assistanteach game has its own chat; it reads the recipe, the notes and the whole conversation, and builds the next version on requestold versions are never overwritten
One loop on another prototype, the dam: v1, my note, one pattern added, v2.
Where the first prototype came from
Before building, I took Beholder apart in a written analysis: which mechanics carry the story,
and what is lost if one of them is removed. Three facts went into the recipe. The landlord has his
own key. A report is checked only by its form. Cameras are paid for with authority points.
I judge the prototype by one thing: whether Beholder is recognisable in it.
Papers, Please and Beholder taken apart layer by layer: how the mechanics carry the meaning, and what
the developers decided along the way. The first prototype was built from the second one.
