Only by finding and focusing on a core mechanism can you further your pursuit of elegance in strategy game design. Clockwork Game Design is the most functional and directly applicable theory for game design. It details the clockwork game design pattern, which focuses on building around fundamental functionality. You can then use this understanding to prescribe a system for building and refining your rulesets. A game can achieve clarity of purpose by starting with a strong core, then removing elements that conflict with that core while adding elements that support it. Filled with examples and exercises detailing how to put the clockwork game design pattern into use, this book is a must-have manual for designing games. A hands-on, practical book that outlines a very specific approach to designing games Develop the mechanics that make your game great, and limit or remove factors that disrupt the core concept Practice designing games through the featured exercises and illustrations

Do you worry that your business will collapse without your constant presence? Are you sacrificing your family, friendships, and freedom to keep your business alive? What if instead your business could run itself, freeing you to do what you love when you want, while it continues to grow and turn a profit? It’s possible. And it's easier than you think. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you started your business so you could be your own boss, make the money you deserve, and live life on your own terms. In reality, you're bogged down in the daily grind, constantly putting out fires, answering an endless stream of questions, and continually hunting for cash. Now, Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First and other small-business bestsellers, offers a straightforward step-by-step path out of this dilemma. In Clockwork, he draws on more than six years of research and real life examples to explain his simple approach to making your business ultra-efficient. Among other powerful strategies, you will discover how to: Make your employees act like owners: Free yourself from micromanaging by using a simple technique to empower your people to make smart decisions without you. Pinpoint your business's most important function: Unleash incredible efficiency by identifying and focusing everyone on the one function that is most crucial to your business. Know what to fix next: Most entrepreneurs try to fix every inefficiency at once and end up fixing nothing. Use the "weakest link in the chain" method to find the one fix that will add the most value now. Whether you have a staff of one, one hundred, or somewhere in between, whether you're a new entrepreneur or have been overworked and overstressed for years, Clockwork is your path to finally making your business work for you.

Despite the proliferation of video games in the twenty-first century, the theory of game design is largely underdeveloped, leaving designers on their own to understand what games really are. Helping you produce better games, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games presents a bold new path for analyzing and designing games.

In 1769, the court of Empress Maria Theresia witnessed one of that era's most amazing feats of engineering: a machine that could play chess. Artfully constructed by a Hungarian nobleman named Wolfgang von Kempelen, the chess-machine played a unique game against each opponent, far surpassing the abilities of all its fellow automata. Throughout its eighty-five year career, audiences across Europe and the Americas flocked to see the mechanical marvel seemingly capable of human intelligence; Napoleon, Charles Babbage, and Benjamin Franklin were among its challengers, and Edgar Allen Poe wrote an essay attempting to explain how it worked. Despite its demise over a hundred fifty years ago, its mystery continues to fascinate, and its audience's reaction to its Orientalist trappings casts fresh light on our present sense of the 'exotic'. Written and Illustrated by Jane Irwin, author of the Vögelein graphic novels, Clockwork Game retells the true story of the world's first chess-playing automaton, blending reality and fiction into a singular graphic novel.

Only by finding and focusing on a core mechanism can you further your pursuit of elegance in strategy game design. Clockwork Game Design is the most functional and directly applicable theory for game design. It details the clockwork game design pattern, which focuses on building around fundamental functionality. You can then use this understanding to prescribe a system for building and refining your rulesets. A game can achieve clarity of purpose by starting with a strong core, then removing elements that conflict with that core while adding elements that support it. Filled with examples and exercises detailing how to put the clockwork game design pattern into use, this book is a must-have manual for designing games. A hands-on, practical book that outlines a very specific approach to designing games Develop the mechanics that make your game great, and limit or remove factors that disrupt the core concept Practice designing games through the featured exercises and illustrations

You understand the basic concepts of game design: gameplay, user interfaces, core mechanics, character design, and storytelling. Now you want to know how to apply them to the puzzle and casual game genres. This focused guide gives you exactly what you need. It walks you through the process of designing for the puzzle and casual game genres and shows you how to use the right techniques to create fun and challenging experiences for your players.

When making games for kids, it’s tempting to simply wing-it on the design. We were all children once, right? The reality is that adults are far removed from the cognitive changes and the motor skill challenges that are the hallmark of the developing child. Designing Games for Children, helps you understand these developmental needs of children and how to effectively apply them to games. Whether you’re a seasoned game designer, a children's media professional, or an instructor teaching the next generation of game designers, Designing Games for Children is the first book dedicated to service the specific needs of children's game designers. This is a hands-on manual of child psychology as it relates to game design and the common challenges designers face. Designing Games for Children is the definitive, comprehensive guide to making great games for kids, featuring: Guidelines and recommendations divided by the most common target audiences – babies and toddlers (0-2), preschoolers (3-5), early elementary students (6-8), and tweens (9-12). Approachable and actionable breakdown of child developmental psychology, including cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development, as it applies to game design Game design insights and guidelines for all aspects of game production, from ideation to marketing