Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition

Chapter 9. Gameplay

Chapter 1, “Games and Video Games,” defined gameplay as consisting of the challenges and actions that a game offers: challenges for the player to overcome and actions that let her overcome them. Games also include actions unrelated to gameplay, but the essence of gameplay remains the relationship between the challenges and the actions available to surmount them.

This chapter begins by discussing how we make games fun, setting out some things you need to be aware of and principles you need to observe. Next we’ll look at some important ideas related to gameplay: the hierarchy of challenges and the concepts of skill, stress, and difficulty. The bulk of the chapter consists of a long list of types of challenges that video games ...