Touching is Good
Game Design for the Nintendo DS
Nick Balogh
Computer Science Senior Project
Union College
Prof. Burns
Nintendo DS
DS Game Design
Design Challenges
Question
• How do you design a “good” game for the
DS??
My Approach
• Good Game Design Principles
• Game Development
• User Testing
• Evaluation of player feedback
Buttons vs. Stylus
My Game
Game cont…
Experiment
• User plays with both control schemes
• Survey
•
•
•
•
•
•
Challenge
Rewarding
Preference
Score
Mastery
Learning Curve
Results
• More challenging
90
80
control scheme
70
• Rewarding on
60
50
40
success
30
20
10
0
Stylus
Buttons
n= 15
More Results
100
• Preference to play
90
80
again
70
60
• Score better with
50
40
30
20
10
n=15
0
Stylus
Buttons
Conclusions
• The touch screen controls provide a
better way to interact and play the game
• DS Games in general
• Touching is Good!
Future Work
• Additional testing
•
Different tests
• Expand Combos
•
•
Complex actions
Multiplayer
• Another game to test screen variations
Questions?
?