Gamestorm

Gamestorm is a brainstorming card deck for video game development. It’s a tool to help game designers, hobbyists, fans and wannabes, generate original ideas for new games. It’s an idea randomizer and an introduction to, designing within constraints, in a super fun, fast freeway past the blank sheet of paper. The deck is more than 300 cards that come in 5 decks: Genre, Mechanics/Hazards, World/Environment, Story/Setting and Characters/Enemies.

Draw a couple cards from the Genre deck (black cards) and inspect both sides. Then draw a couple from the Mechanics deck (red cards). Any ideas sparking? Great! Place those cards in front of you. If any card just isn’t speaking to you, discard it and draw a replacement. Wash, rinse and repeat. Now, draw a card or two from both the Story deck (green) and World deck (blue). Place any cards you like in front of you, or replace any duds. Break out a notebook, dry erase marker/board, post-its… whatever. Try to describe a video game that uses any combination of the cards in front of you. Be instinctive, try not to overthink it and just react to the constraints you’ve presented.

Now, after a few minutes, you should have some ideas to bump into each other. Jot those down and try to expand and connect them. Eventually, the design turns toward the characters and enemies in your game. Flip any (or all) of the cards in front of you over, to reveal images you can use to inform their design. This aspect is purely visual and not meant to be used literally. If the image is of a toy car, enemies don’t have to be all toy cars. Try to react to some aspect of the toy car. Perhaps it’s color, proportions, does it roll or otherwise articulate, get inspired by a tiny detail…

That’s it! It should be fun and fast. Your design will be messy, embrace it. Don’t sweat details and don’t edit. The objective is to generate ideas, lots of them. Classifying them as “good ideas”, “bad ideas”, “dumb ideas’ or “impossible” is a waste of time at this point. Good ideas can come from surprising places and sometimes when you start banging ideas into each other, they generate a real spark.

Gamestorm is designed to be open-ended. There are no rules. There is no right or wrong way to use the deck, but a little setup goes a long way towards a positive experience. Get into a comfortable space and have some things to write with and draw on. Got any friends? Invite them into a gamestorming session and double your brainpower! Maybe you get motivated by a little friendly competition? Try out-storming your friends, or assign them a card from your hand, to include in their game design. Less sure of yourself? Keep it Co-op and try adding a "pass 2, draw 2" mechanic that gets everyone contributing to the same design. Don't want to design with a Genre in mind? Awesome! Don't use them, but keep them handy for reference. There are 35 genre cards. We believe you would be very hard pressed to name a game that exists outside of their combined parameters.

Your Average Robot is very experienced, but not omnipotent. We want you to contribute constraints to the deck! There are 21 "Blank" cards for you to fill in with your own ideas. Got a great mechanic we missed? Maybe a cool story setting, or even a Genre "we're obviously avoiding." Put it on a card and add it to your deck, then send the robots an email, gleefully pointing out our shortcomings. Really. We love criticism. info@youraveragerobot.com