1st Edition

Anatomy of Game Design

By Tom Smith Copyright 2025
274 Pages 103 B/W Illustrations
by CRC Press

274 Pages 103 B/W Illustrations
by CRC Press

274 Pages 103 B/W Illustrations
by CRC Press

People have played games forever, but it’s only in the past few decades that people really started thinking about what games are, how they work, and how to make them better. Anatomy of Game Design takes some of the most popular and beloved games of all time and dissects them to see what makes them tick. By breaking down the systems and content of each game, the underlying systems of game... Read more

Chapter 01          Game Dissections

Chapter 02          Shovel Knight/Verbs

Chapter 03          Candy Crush Saga/Goals

Chapter 04          Centipede/Dynamics

Chapter 05          Settlers of Catan/Uncertainty

Chapter 06          Spelunky/Systems

Chapter 07          Magic: The Gathering/Content

Chapter 08          Royale High/Audience

Chapter 09          Papers, Please/Meaning

Chapter 10          Post Mortem

Biography

Tom Smith has been a professional game designer since 1995. In that time, Tom has worked on games of all types – board games, console games, educational games, mobile games, advertising games, PC games, big companies like Disney, small startups that got bought by big companies like Roblox, and many more. Tom also teaches game design at Moorpark College. Tom lives near Los Angeles with his wife, children, and cats.