---
name: game-information-design
description: Create or revise puzzles, investigations, hidden-state reasoning, learning episodes, hints and external memory. Use when a game decision depends on available evidence, understanding, a teachable relation or assistance. Skip ordinary text edits, pure lore and tasks with no change to inference, learning or the work delegated to help.
license: MIT
metadata:
  assay-optional-skills: "evidence-research test-writing"
---

# Game information design

Create a task the participant can investigate, understand and act on. Deliver
the actual evidence, permitted operations, answer form, learning situation or
help content. The designer's correct solution alone is insufficient material.

## Build the participant's next decision

1. **Identify the work that matters.** Is the participant finding evidence,
   remembering it, learning an operation, connecting facts, choosing under
   uncertainty or executing a known decision? More than one can matter, but
   changing one does not automatically preserve the others. Recover what this
   participant can know before acting, including prior competence and permanent
   assistance. Separate operational clarity from a mystery intended to remain.
2. **Construct the relationship in the game.** For a puzzle, create facts,
   encounterable evidence, meaningful alternatives and a way to express the
   conclusion. For learning, create a first application and a later situation
   that changes the relevant context. For help, write its actual words or signal
   and specify when the participant obtains it. Develop one usable version.
3. **Trace a plausible route and a consequential alternative.** Include an
   unexpected visit order, a missing clue, a knowledgeable participant skipping
   instruction or a requested help channel. Preserve an early correct answer
   when the game's chosen confirmation rule permits it. Decide how an incorrect
   answer changes the situation and whether repeated guessing is part of play.
4. **Revise the relation implicated by the evidence.** A missing observation
   needs a different change from an unavailable input or an unpersuasive
   inference. If help supplies the whole conclusion, either change the help or
   acknowledge the resulting change in activity. Do not call an assisted button
   press evidence of independent application.
5. **Return the playable material and a bounded account.** Include starting
   knowledge, evidence or prompts, allowed actions, feedback and the resulting
   state. Formal access or logical sufficiency can be established from the
   rules. A claim that people understood, learned or transferred the relation
   needs observations of that outcome.

## Select the relevant construction

| Task | Read | Result to make |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Puzzle, investigation, hidden state or uncertain choice | [Inference](references/inference.md) | Evidence and alternatives connected to an answer or action |
| Introduction, new tool, return to a skill or external learning objective | [Learning and help](references/learning-and-help.md#construct-learning-and-application) | First application, new application and feedback |
| Hint, notebook, journal, highlighted relation or assistance | [Work delegated to help](references/learning-and-help.md#choose-what-help-does) | Actual help with an explicit remaining decision |

The [shared context](../game-design/references/relations-and-context.md) keeps
crossing changes attached to the same game and episode. For work with project
data or tools, use the [consumer and Assay contract](../game-design/references/consumer-and-assay-contract.md)
and [environment contracts](../game-design/references/environment-contracts.md).
They retain general research and verification ownership.

## Follow information across owners

[Entities](../gameplay-design/references/entities.md#actor-knowledge) is the
canonical method for what a character may know, believe or say. A clue voiced
by an NPC must satisfy it; its truth is not permission for the NPC to know it.
[World relations](../game-world-narrative-design/references/world-relations.md)
supplies what produced the evidence. [Conditional story](../game-world-narrative-design/references/conditional-story.md)
supplies scene conditions and effects after an answer. Use [repertoire](../game-content-design/references/repertoire.md)
for jointly generated facts and evidence, [adaptation](../game-design/references/adaptation.md)
for a changed language or carrier, and [access and return](../game-participation-design/references/access-and-return.md)
for participation channels. An enduring assistant can be part of the intended
play; independence is defined relative to that agreed channel.