Game Design course by Extra History

About this course

Designing a great game is less about lucky inspiration and more about making clear, testable decisions that respect how people actually play. This free online course helps you sharpen that mindset, connecting classic design principles to modern challenges in game development. You will learn how designers shape tension and rhythm, create systems that motivate without exhausting the player, and build experiences that feel fair, readable, and satisfying across different playstyles.

Throughout the course, you will explore what makes players stick with a game: strong onboarding, well-scaffolded tutorials, and interfaces that teach without interrupting flow. You will look at how affordances guide attention, why too many options can paralyze decision-making, and how accessibility features often improve usability for everyone. These ideas translate directly to better moment-to-moment gameplay, clearer UI and level readability, and fewer frustrating points where players churn out.

You will also examine design in the larger ecosystem around games. Topics like speedrunning, streaming, observer-friendly design, and asymmetric multiplayer highlight how communities engage with games beyond the intended path. You will reflect on the impact of business models and progression systems, including energy and timer mechanics, randomness balancing, and the risks of overreliance on metrics. The goal is to help you identify when data supports good judgment and when it can quietly push a game toward blandness or compulsive patterns.

Narrative and meaning are treated as design materials too: not just story beats, but how mechanics communicate values, create emotional catharsis through player action, and shape moral or no-win choices. You will consider how game history, board games, and iterative pre-production thinking can make your work more original and more feasible to ship. By the end, you should be better equipped to critique games with precision, document ideas clearly, and design systems, levels, and experiences that feel intentional from first click to final moment.