Casual Game Design

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In fact, this sense of exploration and experimentation undergirds most games

based on physics. In physics-based games, the designers and programmers lay out

a game system in which the player’s interactions are affected by a model of phys-

ics. Objects fall and bounce. Balls roll. Friction slowly overcomes bodies in motion.

In these games, simplified versions of Newtonian physics become part of the rule

set for the game. You can shoot an object at a target, but the rules of physics deter-

mine the flight path, with gravity eventually pulling your shot down. What in other

games would have been a simple matter of pointing requires more complex calcula-

tions in a physics-based game.

Physics games complicate the player’s moves. Input and ...