This semester, I was the lead designer behind the game Bottle & Barter , a blend between potion crafting, customer interacting, and choose your own adventure-style stories. I learned so much from this project, and I was able to take it much farther than I ever thought I’d be able to! B&B started as a simple idea: what if you were a potion seller, and one of your customers accidentally exploded upon drinking a potion you sold them? This concept of not knowing your potion’s effects, along with the anticipation and surprise of finding out what they actually do, was the foundation of what our game would eventually turn out to be. This idea would eventually make its way into our paper prototype, and prove to be an engaging experience for players. I believe that this solid foundation enabled us to develop our game confidently, cutting out features that didn’t serve this foundation and pouring our effort into areas of the design that did. For example, we originally pla...