Teil 1 · Introduction — Play and Puzzles
Kapitel 2
Words for Talking About Puzzles
6 articles
MDA, lenses, verbs, mechanics. We trace where the shared vocabulary of designers came from, and place this site's Mechanics Lexicon as its continuation.
Articles in this chapter
- 1.The Art of Computer Game Design (1984) — The First Book That Tried to Define What a Game Is2026-08-21 · Toki · 4 min
In 1984, Chris Crawford — a game designer who had just been laid off by Atari — wrote a book: The Art of Computer Game Design. It was the world's first serious attempt to define a game itself, through four elements: representation, interaction, conflict, and safety. This essay traces the early-1980s context that produced the book, the small living-room gathering he started the following years that grew into today's GDC, and why his definition still fuels academic debate today.
- 2.The MDA Framework (2004) — Three Words Puzzle Designers Still Use2026-08-23 · Toki · 3 min
In 2004, a few-page paper presented at an AAAI workshop reshaped the vocabulary of game design. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek formalized Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. This piece follows those three words from Doug Church's unfinished 1999 homework, through a GDC workshop room, into the real project Oasis, and onto the shelf we now call Steam.
- 3.Book of Lenses (2008) — A Hundred Ways to Look at a Game2026-08-25 · Toki · 3 min
Published in 2008, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses introduced 100 questions for looking at a game. A historian's look at where that idea came from, and how it still reaches today's puzzle designers.
- 4.Wenn weniger Verben ein reicheres Spiel ergeben — die Genealogie der subtraktiven Gestaltung2026-06-03 · Komugi · 6 min
Sokoban, Snakebird, Stephen's Sausage Roll, A Monster's Expedition, Bonfire Peaks. Ein Überblick aus der Sicht des Gestalters über die subtraktive Gestaltung — jene Genealogie, die den Schwierigkeitsgrad vertieft, ohne Verben hinzuzufügen — entlang einer Frage: Warum wird weniger zu mehr?
- 5.The Verb Survives Even When the Name Is Lost — Four Paths Japanese Puzzles Took Across Borders2026-09-06 · Komugi · 4 min
Sokoban crossed the world keeping its own name, becoming an untranslated term in computer science. Panel de Pon lost its name but its chain-matching grammar survived. Kwirk changed its potato hero into a tomato. Professor Layton reversed the flow, importing a Western brainteaser tradition. Four cases on why a game's grammar and its name travel separately.
- 6."Verbs Made of Smaller Verbs" — Andrew Plotkin's Zoom-Out Design Pattern, from ThinkyCon 20252026-08-15 · Tsumiki · 3 min
One piece today: "Towers of Pen: puzzle experiences that zoom out and out" by Andrew Plotkin, from ThinkyCon 2025 (free online puzzle game developer conference, November 5–7, 2025). A YouTube recording and an essay version at eblong.com are both available. Plotkin describes a design pattern he calls "verbs made of smaller verbs": puzzle games where players discover that the moves they've been making at a high level are themselves entire puzzles at a lower level. Using Hadean Lands, Baba Is You, COCOON, and others as case studies, he lays out three conditions for the pattern to hold, and examines why games like Myst came close but ultimately did not achieve it.