I build game prototypes from these cards. Each card is one pattern from the Game Design Patterns catalog by Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen. A pattern is a move that many games repeat, such as Time Limits or Tension.
To find a pattern by what it does in a game, each one is placed on two axes. Up: MDA — the rules a designer writes (mechanics), what happens when people play (dynamics), what the player feels (feelings). Across: the part of the game it belongs to — Tracy Fullerton's formal elements, plus drama and interface. An AI agent read every catalog page and wrote the explanations below in its own words; nothing is copied from the catalog.
Explanations, link reasons and pictograms: CC BY 4.0 — take them, change them, name the source. Pattern names and the links between them come from the catalog; each card links to its page there.