Pillars and loop

Use this page as the short design filter. If a feature or puzzle idea does not serve these rules, it needs a clear reason to stay.

Design principles

Principle	Meaning	Design test
Learn	Rephrased is a puzzle game about language learning.	Does the player infer meaning from use, not instruction?
Powerful	The player changes world rules, not just object states.	Does the sentence feel like it rewrites a rule of the space?
Visual	The game teaches through layout, animation, camera, and environment.	Can the player understand the next step without heavy UI text?

Core loop

1. Enter a new space and observe rune-like shapes, slots, blocked paths, and environmental cues.
2. Collect or identify available runes.
3. Place runes into a sentence structure.
4. Watch the environment respond.
5. Infer rune meaning or rule behavior from the response.
6. Recombine runes to solve the space and unlock the next memory, area, or vocabulary.

Design guardrails

• Prefer sentence-driven solutions over manual object handling.
• Use repeated layouts only when the second use teaches a twist.
• A puzzle should usually teach one new rule or one new combination, not several unrelated ideas.
• Failure feedback should be readable in the world: no change, partial change, wrong target, or blocked effect.

Related pages

• GDD summary
• Tutorialization and hints
• Level design template

Change history

• 2026-05-08 — Gabriel Li — Added baseline change history section for weekly wiki maintenance.