The tools below are commonly used in Gamelab design activities as well as courses like Serious Games en Gamification or Play, Perform, Participate. Moreover, we explore the use of small, easy-to-use tools like GB Studio, Bitsy, Flickgame or Idle Game Maker that enable students to practice expressing themselves using the language of game design.
Tabletop Simulator (Berserk Games) is a physics-based and networked tool to play and (co-)design analogue games by creating or repurposing game assets and scripting in-game behavior.
Tabletop Playground (Plasticity Studios) is a virtual environmental for playing and (co)designing analogue games based on the Unreal Engine and partner of the Horizon Europe project STRATEGIES .
Analogue Prototyping Materials
For board game prototyping, we use a steadily growing library of dice, tokens, LEGO-compatible pieces and repurposed materials from commercial board games.
NanDECK is a free and accessible tool to create playing cards as well as other boardgame materials like tiles or tokens via a markup/scripting language similar to HTML.
Twine is a web-based authoring tool to create interactive digital narratives, i.e. branching-path stories but also RPG or simulation game mechanics.