Individual skill
game-design
Use when designing or repairing what makes a game fun — verbs and mechanics, moment-to-moment/session/meta loops, progression, economy faucets and sinks, difficulty curves, dominant strategies, juice, prototyping and scope. NOT engine code (that is `godot`), NOT story (that is `game-storytelling`), NOT level layout (that is `level-design`).
skills/game-design/SKILL.md
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- agent-skills Repository topic
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- game-design Declared skill tag
- mechanics Declared skill tag
- core-loop Declared skill tag
- balancing Declared skill tag
- progression Declared skill tag
- playtesting Declared skill tag
- scope Declared skill tag
- fun Declared skill tag
- design Derived category
- writing Derived category
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SKILL.mdcore · 14,609 bytesevals/README.mddoc · 866 bytesevals/cases.yamlasset · 3,864 bytesreferences/mechanics-and-loops.mddoc · 6,488 bytesreferences/playtesting-and-scope.mddoc · 5,159 bytesreferences/progression-and-economy.mddoc · 5,753 bytes
Read excerpt
# Design games that are fun on purpose
Engine-agnostic game design: mechanics, loops, progression, economy, balance, feel, and the discipline of prototyping and scope. No engine APIs live here — when the design is settled, the implementation belongs to [`godot`](../godot/SKILL.md), [`unity`](../unity/SKILL.md), or [`unreal`](../unreal/SKILL.md).
Two premises govern everything below. **Fun is discovered, not designed** — you cannot reason your way to a fun game on paper, you find it by building the smallest playable version and playing it, so every hour spent planning a mechanic you have not prototyped is an hour spent guessing. And **a game is the set of verbs it gives the player plus the loops those verbs live in** — art, story, and levels dress that skeleton; if the skeleton is not fun in greybox, nothing dresses it into fun.
Route elsewhere when the ask is not design:
| The ask | Route to | Why not here |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Write the movement/AI/shader/save code | [`godot`](../godot/SKILL.md) / [`unity`](../unity/SKILL.md) / [`unreal`](../unreal/SKILL.md) | This skill decides *what* to build; the engine skill builds it. |
| Author the story, dialogue, characters, lore | [`game-storytelling`](../game-storytelling/SKILL.md) | Narrative design is its own craft; this skill owns systems and verbs. |
| Lay out a level, encounter, or world map | [`level-design`](../level-design/SKILL.md) | Spatial/encounter design applies the mechanics this skill defines. |
| Netcode, prediction, lag compensation | [`gamedev-multiplayer`](../gamedev-multiplayer/SKILL.md) | A technical domain, not core design intent. |