Positive and Negative Design Rules

Rules of PlayBook by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen

A small task from the university side was to define the positive and negative design rules of my project. Here is a short list of rules:

Positive:

1. Non-linear puzzle solving (Some puzzle can be solved in different ways).
2. Intuitive puzzle solving (Most of the puzzles use the same solving mechanism and as soon as you solve the first one you understand how to solve the others).
3. Explicit Environment (you see same puzzles mechanism and you clearly understand “This is a puzzle”).
4. Interactivity (The player can Hold/Move/Rotate all the small objects in the game).
5. No dead-ends (If you missed something you always can go back).

Negative:

1. No Inventory (You can take only two items simultaneously).
2. Game linearity (You can`t move to a new location till you don`t solve the puzzle).
3. Story is forced (Players are forced to read logs to find solution to some puzzles).
4. Limited actions (Almost all the gameplay is based on the hands control interaction).
5. You cannot jump (In my attempt to limit the functionality areas of the game I had to limit this exploration action – this was done because you could stuck by jumping in some areas of the game).