Design Week is a thrice-annual challenge for teams of 4-6 post-secondary game design students. A theme is announced Monday morning, and the teams have until Thursday night to complete a game prototype and document their creation with a short video.

The Challenge

Design and implement an "underexplored action" in first-person perspective, and present it in a playground for players to explore what they can do with it.

The Action

Your action should be the core mechanic "verb" that players use to accomplish tasks or interact with your game world.

It should be something you're not used to seeing in dozens of popular games.

Specifically, avoid focusing on well-explored actions like...

These can be part of your game, helping to set up the context for using your action or providing navigation between interaction opportunities, but your under-explored action and the main focus of your attention and the player's should be as distinct as possible from this "usual fare".

Be sure to distinguish between your action and your premise. Even if you have a very original setting, character role, or objective, if the player is still using relatively conventional means to act it out, then you still have room to push further into underexplored territory.

The Playground

The submitted showcase build should offer a playground of opportunities for players to try using your action in a variety of ways. These could include...

• Tasks to perform / complete
• Challenges or obstacles to overcome
• Tests to see how far the action can be pushed
• ...or just moments of satisfying toy-like interaction, without a goal to accomplish.

Your playground can be a single scene / level or multiple, as long as there is a way to navigate between the different interactions.

It does not need to have an overarching story or win / lose condition, and there does not need to be a logical connection between the different interactions presented, as long as a player can easily understand what they should do with your action to apply it in each situation.

Highlight Design Skills

Your submissions should demonstrate that your team can do the following: