No small part of game design involves figuring out how to best explain your game. An old adage of software design was, “write the manual first” as this forces you to think about how the end user will experience your product. This carries over into game design as well: if, when writing the rules or teaching a game you find that you can’t explain it, it’s time to have a hard look at the underlying design.

Below you can see a 7-minute overview of the in-progress game, Daybreak that I shot yesterday for a group who will be playing this Friday.

The game continues to evolve, but it’s exciting to see the changes get smaller and smaller with each iteration. Once that wraps up, we’ll shift into product design and at some point, our videos won’t feature so much shiny Scotch tape and awkward transitions. In the meantime, have a look and let me know in the comments below if you have any impressions.

If you found this interesting, you can follow our design process more closely in our design log. You can also sign up for exactly 1 email when Daybreak launches at daybreakgame.org.

UPDATE:

The new, updated version of the video is now available:

You can also check out the first version of the video that originally accompanied this post.