Priya's Wednesday, Two Ways
8 lessons · 24 prompts
A day in the life of a Game Designer: what changes with these prompts.
Track progress as a memberPriya, a mid-level game designer at a small studio.
Priya starts her Wednesday with a messy list of ideas for a new puzzle mechanic. She opens ChatGPT and uses the Brainstorm Game Mechanics prompt. She types: 'I want a mechanic where players rotate rooms to guide a rolling ball, but it should feel calm, not frantic.' The AI gives her ten variations, and she picks three to test.
Next, she needs to write a short design doc for her lead. She uses the Draft Design Documents prompt in Claude. She pastes her chosen mechanic and asks for a one-page spec with goals, player actions, and open questions. The draft is clear enough to share after a quick edit.
After lunch, she has playtest notes from six players. She uses the Analyze Player Feedback prompt in Gemini. She pastes the notes and asks for clusters of issues and three action items. The AI groups them into 'confusing controls' and 'reward timing', which matches what she suspected.
With the time she saves, Priya takes a walk before her afternoon meeting. She also uses the extra hour to sketch a new level idea that she would have skipped otherwise. She ends the day feeling less buried and more creative.
Before
- Days full of formatting and note sorting
- Little time to explore new ideas
- Playtest feedback piles up unread
- Design docs take hours to write
After this course
- More time for creative thinking
- Feedback sorted in minutes
- Docs drafted quickly, then refined
- Ends the day with energy left
What you'll learn
- Brainstorm Mechanics: Generate and refine core game mechanics before you build a prototype.
- Draft Design Docs: Turn rough ideas into clear design documents, specs, and pitches.
- Plan Levels: Plan level flow, define prototype scope, and prepare test cases for greybox builds.
- Balance Difficulty: Model difficulty curves, check reward economies, and spot exploits in your systems.
- Prepare Playtests: Prepare playtest scripts, observation checklists, and feedback surveys.
- Analyze Feedback: Cluster player feedback, turn it into action items, and summarize findings for the team.
- Coordinate Teams: Write art briefs, explain logic to programmers, and troubleshoot broken interactions from a description.
- Write Updates: Draft patch notes, tutorial text, and community FAQs that explain game changes clearly.
How this course works
- 8 lessonsOne task of your job each, from brainstorm game mechanics to write player-facing updates.
- Ready-to-paste promptsCopy, fill in the parts in {{brackets}}, paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
- Tick and completeTick the prompts you tried and mark each lesson complete.
- Get certifiedFinish and keep the prompts as your own library.