During Game Design I my classmates and I were tasked with creating a game around an abstract concept. For my game I chose the concept of threat detection. While performing research on the concept I was surprised to discover the many different ways that a threat can be perceived. I decided that I wanted to make a game that would allow all players in the game to feel the pressure of danger at all times.
I started by basing my game off of other games that I thought were exciting as a child. I settled on having a core mechanic similar to dodgeball while incorporating some aspects of tag. The result was Espionage, a playground game based on the concept of threat detection. Players are either spies or agents who are in conflict over secrets. Spies want to capture all of the secrets and get all of the agents fired. Agents want to stop all of the spies and turn them into informants.
Below is the GDD for the game including a page at the end which touches on some of the rough concepts that were worked through during the design process.
© 2014 Matthew Mathis
Matt Mathis 