The Core Principles Of Game Design:

There are 3 main principles a game designer should follow.

Principle 1: More rewards than punishments, more power ups than obstacles. A game should encourage the player to continue via positive reinforcement, keeping the player excited and engaged

Principle 2: Start with a core game mechanic and build from it. Analyse and deconstruct every game you play

Principle 3: Your games controls and game as a whole should be easy to learn but hard to master

Now I’m to give a example of the principles use in already existing games. The Mario games of at least the traditional 2/2.5D Mario bros games feature more and more power ups as the games go on. Now some say this formula of games has already gotten dry, however the addition of new power ups and enemies added to each instalment keep it at least somewhat fresh in. An example of principles 2 use could be from any game. Any game where a main character has one ability that gets upgraded throughout the game to have different abilities, this is the second principle. Mega Man is a great example seeing as every ability you get in each of the games are just other forms of the basic shooting the game begins with. The third principle can also be seen in many games, but I believe Mario Odyssey would be the best to talk about here. The controls that allow such fluid movement are put to their best uses through out the game, making it more and more challenging as the game progresses (some of the moons at the very end of the game become almost input perfect levels of challenge) and I believe it’s done perfectly. The games controls are so easy to pickup but Mario has enough moves in his arsenal to allow constant freedom to do new things. Even replaying the game never gets old as the game allows frequent times to learn new tricks such as being allowed to skip even fragments of the levels early just by jumping in a way a first play through wouldn’t have made you think about (the speed running community for this game was crazy especially around when it first released)