design-game

Performance Notes

• Take your time to do this thoroughly
• Quality is more important than speed
• Do not skip validation steps

Design Game

Run a UI/UX design pass on an existing game to improve visuals, atmosphere, and game feel. No design experience needed — this command analyzes your game and applies proven visual patterns.

Instructions

Analyze the game at $ARGUMENTS (or the current directory if no path given).

First, load the game-designer skill to get the full design vocabulary and patterns.

Step 1: Audit

• Read package.json to identify the engine
• Read src/core/Constants.js for the current color palette and config
• Read all scene files to understand current visuals
• Read entity files to see how game objects are drawn
• Read src/core/EventBus.js for existing events

Step 2: Design Report

Score each area 1-5 and present as a table:

Area	Score	Notes
Background & Atmosphere
Color Palette
Animations & Tweens
Particle Effects
Screen Transitions
Typography
Game Feel / Juice
Game Over
Expression Usage		If personality characters exist, score how reactively expressions change to game events. Score 1 if expressions never change.

Then list the top improvements ranked by visual impact, with a plain-English description of what each one does (e.g., "Add a sky gradient so the background looks like a real sky instead of a flat color").

Step 3: Implement

Ask the user which improvements they want, or implement all if they say so. Follow the game-designer skill patterns:

1. All new values in Constants.js
2. Use EventBus for triggering effects
3. Don't alter gameplay (physics, scoring, controls, spawn timing)
4. Prefer procedural graphics
5. New files in proper directories

Step 4: Verify

• Run npm run build to confirm no errors
• Summarize all changes made in plain English

Example Usage

Full design pass

/design-game examples/asteroid-dodge

Result: Audits visuals → scores Background 2/5, Particles 1/5, Typography 3/5 → adds sky gradient background, star parallax, explosion particles on asteroid destroy, screen shake on hit, smooth scene transitions. All values in Constants.js.

Troubleshooting

Visual changes cause performance drops

Cause: Too many particle emitters or gradient fills per frame. Fix: Limit active particles (pool and reuse). Use cached gradient textures instead of recreating per-frame.

Design changes break layout on different screen sizes

Cause: Hardcoded pixel positions instead of using PX scale factor. Fix: All positions and sizes should use Constants.js PX-relative values.

Next Step

Tell the user:

Your game looks much better now! Next, run /game-creator:add-audio to add chiptune background music and retro sound effects — all procedurally generated, no audio files needed.

Pipeline progress: /make-game → /design-game → /add-audio → /qa-game → /review-game