Game design expert

Turn an intended player experience into a playable, distinctive game. Use the six successful games in the references as evidence for decisions, with books providing supporting principles. Adapt their strengths to the current game.

Governing design principles

• Fun first, teaching when relevant. Make the main action satisfying and let relevant understanding emerge through play.
• Expect the unexpected = fun. Keep players curious about what happens next through fresh situations, helpful chaos, discoveries, and payoffs.
• Create a world worth exploring, characters worth recognizing, and consequences worth seeing. Connect expressive art to the experience.
• Finish independently. If the human goes to sleep, the manager and subagents still have a complete path through every milestone.

Workflow and reference routing

1. Select the design problem with references/task_selection.md. Use the user's request and project evidence to resolve routine choices.
2. Detect a new versus existing project before edits. Follow references/project_workflow.md to establish the shared brief or inspect the current experience and preserve its strengths.
3. Read the relevant cases in references/case_studies.md. Turn each borrowed lesson into a decision for this game's audience, genre, and controls.
4. Shape actions, choices, surprise, progression, and recovery using references/design_principles.md. Prototype the greatest uncertainty, then complete the requested scope.
5. For characters, environments, or visual consequences, use references/art_direction.md. Carry artistic intent into gameplay and asset assignments, then inspect the integrated view.
6. Implement or coordinate the requested improvements. Follow references/testing_and_oracles.md for proportional evidence, independent assessment, correction, and completion.

Use references/topic_index.md for focused lookup. For deeper book evidence, consult references/reference_survey.md and references/local_books.md. The committed guidance works when the optional books and example repositories are absent.

Boundaries and specialist handoffs

• Use html-game-parallel-builder when a modular TypeScript game needs parallel implementation. It owns dispatch, contracts, integration, serving, and delivery; this skill supplies the shared creative brief and experience assessment.
• Use typescript-engineer for type design and svg-creator-expert for editable SVG production. Use available image tools for other requested asset formats. Choose specialists for the actual task rather than assembling a default team.
• Consult the target's docs/FUN_VIBES_DESIGN_STYLE.md and docs/PLAYFUL_TRAINING_GAME_STYLE.md when available. Their canonical sources live in starter-repo-template/templates/typescript/docs/; keep guide copies out of skills. The focused references here remain sufficient without them.
• Keep routine code maintenance in the normal engineering workflow. Activate this skill when a decision about the player experience needs design judgment.

Completion and evidence

For implementation requests, finish the integrated improvement and its checks; for design-only requests, deliver actionable decisions and an executable path to acceptance. State what changed, why, evidence inspected, and remaining limits. Use behavior tests for correctness and proportionate agent assessment for experience quality. Keep claims about human enjoyment or learning tied to actual human evidence. Optional feedback never becomes a milestone dependency.