design-research— agent skill

Respond in the user's preferred language (detect from their recent messages, or fall back to the language setting in CLAUDE.md).

Search for game design references to the problem currently being discussed. Focus on design patterns and player experience, not code.

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Process

1. Identify the core design question (e.g., "how to structure a survival loop on a ship", "how trading between cities creates interesting choices")
2. Search for game design analyses, GDC talks, postmortems, and design breakdowns using WebSearch. Good query patterns:

• "[game name]" game design analysis [mechanic]
• GDC [mechanic] design postmortem
• [mechanic] game design breakdown

1. Organize into a comparison table:

1. Recommend which approach best fits this project's scope and feel, and why

Notes

• Focus on the player experience, not implementation — "RimWorld uses a bill queue per workbench that lets players set min/max thresholds" is good; "WorkGiver_DoBill class" is not
• Prefer games the team has likely played or that are well-documented
• Include at least one game from a different genre if it solves the same design problem in an interesting way
• If searching yields thin results, lean on your own knowledge of game design — but flag which insights came from search vs. your own analysis