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Bryan Westman
Ph.D. Canidate
CAEA Conference 2025
Storyboarding for Game Design
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•Even the youngest student can use storyboards to tell a complicated story or convey ideas through images that might be too hard to explain in words.
How Storyboards Can Help Game Design and Student Artists
•Visualizing the Story: Storyboards allow students to break down complex thoughts or stories into a series of images.
•The images help explain the plot, movement, look, character interactions, surroundings, and dialogue.
•Students can even start developing the goals, rules, and game mechanics through their drawings.
Align the Team
•Align the Team: Storyboards provide a shared visual aid that all the participants can understand.
• In the world of game design, this lets concept artists, coders, props, producers, voice actors, and so on come together on one idea.
•In a classroom, this lets partners or groups, or the entire class, come together to see what each person is working on.
Parts of a Game
•Goal - What does a player or team have to do to win? Cross the finish line first, collect the most marbles, be the last one standing, etc.
•Challenge - What obstacles might you put in the player’s way to make reaching the goal fun and interesting?
•How is he/she being kept from reaching a goal? His/Her leg is tied to a teammate’s, the marbles are hidden, and getting hit with a ball ends game play.
•Core Mechanics - What core actions or moves does the player do to power the play of the game? Jumping, wiggling, searching, solving clues, ducking, bobbing, weaving, dodging.
•Components - What parts make up the materials of play? Bandanas? A grassy field, marbles, red rubber balls, and a court? (Note: Players are components of a game).
•Rules - What relationships define what a player can and cannot do in the game?
• Players’ legs are tied together; they must start on the same line, all marbles must be gathered within 3 minutes, and balls can only be thrown outside the line towards the midsection.
•Space - Where does the game take place, and how does that space affect the game? Basketball court? A circle? Classroom? The park?
Build Your Game
•Game Design
•The game design process can be used to create any kind of game. A board game, card game, sport, video game, etc.
•There are several steps in the game design process that you need to follow to create a game that is successful.
Step 1- Brainstorm
•Brainstorming is all about coming up with many different ways of approaching a design challenge. During this phase, it is important to not edit yourself or write off any ideas. No idea is a bad idea at this stage! That being said, after coming up with several different possible directions, you might consider asking to pitch ideas to you or to peers for feedback to help them narrow down and improve their ideas.
Step 2- Prototype
•Once YOU have selected the top ideas, you can begin to prototype in order to create something playable to get more feedback.
• Post-it notes, index cards, paper and pen make great prototyping materials. Make sure to try out the game as you build it, so you can refine as you go. It’s okay if their game totally changes at this point! The point is to go back and forth between prototyping and testing in order to get to a game that is super fun.
Step 3 - Playtes
•Playtesting is an important part of the design process. It’s impossible to know how a game will work without having other people play it and provide feedback. At this stage, you should be paired up to play each other’s games and give feedback to one another. Allow time for both play and feedback.
Step 4 - Iterate
•After playtesting, allow time to make changes to your game based on feedback. Select just one or two ideas from the playtest to implement. Time permitting, you may build in another playtest after you have iterated on the games.
Step 5 - Reflect
•Reflection is a key part of the game design process and for learning. Reflect on what YOU learned during the process and from collaborating with peers. You need to think about what went well and what was challenging for you.
•What is a game? It’s often hard to define. A good way to think about what a game is is to look at parts of a game.
• Throughout time and across cultures, most games have the same six parts: a goal, a challenge, core mechanics, components, rules, and space.
•Understanding parts of a game opens up the world of game design because with this knowledge, you can change one part of a game to create a new game (called modding) or design your own unique game by taking all six parts of a game into account.
Student Examples
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