Abby Friesen

Writing a Game Design Document Your Team Can Actually Use

*claps hands together loudly* “Alrighty, who’s ready to read my 30-page GDD that I spent the last two days writing?!” Yeah, me neither. I’ve seen a number of game design documents get out of hand and become a chore to maintain and read. They end up looking more like a wall of text than a…

October 20, 2014 // Abby Friesen

Filament Games | Educational Game Developer

The Balancing Act: Including Others in Your Designs

Designers, we are not the only ones with ideas and solutions. There is a careful balance we must maintain between designing features by ourselves and gathering the developer’s ideas and feedback. A game is a bajillion times better when it’s the combination of everyone’s creativity. It’s the kind of thing that’s obvious in theory but…

September 11, 2015 // Abby Friesen

Designing Games for Toys and Young Learners

I recently had the privilege of working with Square Panda to create learning games for youngsters to help teach them letters. They use a physical tray and a series of plastic letters that players can manipulate in real life to interact with the digital game on a tablet. It looks like this: Photo credit: Square Panda…

April 26, 2017 // Abby Friesen