Design Process Overview

Part I : Game Design Goal

The goal of Thunderclap was to use a classic game experience to teach the fundamentals of real electrical discharge.
My objective here was to test the ability of "thematic disguise", using a entertainment focused game to deliver an educational reward.
Thus the game had to emulate real lightning behavior in its mechanics.

Part II : Technical Design

Three major participants can be identified in lightning discharge - the source, the conductor and the end. My approach to technical design to meet the design goals was to create a node based system, where each node behaved like one of the three participants.

Part III : Implementation

The major advantage of the node system was that as long as components were created using different combinations of the three nodes, they would always follow the fundamentals of real electrical discharge that the game was centered around.