Module Introduction
This week marked the beginning of our second year, and our first Game Design Studio session focused on the structure and expectations of the module. One of the key assessments this term will be the completion of a Game Design Document (GDD)—a comprehensive file that includes the game’s mechanics, narrative, visual direction, and ideally some early-stage prototypes or visual mockups.
For my summer project, I researched the game Dread Hunger, analysing its available GDD resources and immersive design strategies. This process helped me understand how professional games evolve from concept documents into full-scale production. I hope to apply a similar structured logic in my own project development this year.
Group Brainstorming
As a group, we explored the concept of “Movement” through collaborative brainstorming and physical mind-mapping. Our whiteboard exercise included everything from time loops and environmental changes to emotional movement and transitions across space.
We brought together a variety of prompts:
- Photos of spaces in motion (like swimming pools and roads)
- Sticky notes with keywords like “season”, “emotion”, “punch”, “floating”, “rotation”, and “ritual”
- A central theme of how movement affects the player’s sense of time, space, and control
This ideation session helped us lay the foundation for a more poetic or experiential game direction. I personally enjoyed seeing how abstract words like “pause” or “loop” could trigger ideas for mechanics or visual metaphors.