For people who make games
Design a game people keep coming back to — the whole craft, in about an hour.
Game design is a real discipline with a real literature, and almost none of it reaches the people starting out. This is the travel-guide version: we read the designers who built the games that lasted, planned the route, and marked every stop worth making — honest about where they disagree, grounded in playtesting and research, made to stick.
Why this is different
Grounded
A free summary is one voice with no receipts. Here, every claim traces to the books behind it — we read the canon so you don’t have to, and show the sources.
Aware
We take the comprehensive view — naming where the field broadly agrees and where the outliers are. On the outliers we take a position, weighed by the type and quality of the evidence behind it: the author’s, or our own research.
Essential
Not exhaustive, not thin — only what’s load-bearing, ordered as a journey from foundations to the summit. Light enough to carry.
Start with the library
The canon for this craft, read structurally and cited per claim — what each book argues, the ideas it contributes, and how it fits. Guides that reconcile them across the field are on the way.
Browse the library →