ABSTRACT
The challenge of every game analysis is to get across what the game is like, even if the reader has not played it. Thus one of the first things we have to do is explain the basic rules. When new players are introduced to a non-digital game, they usually get a brief introduction of the basic rules and the win condition, which may be followed by a test play-through where more nuanced restrictions are explained. A game analysis does not have to reproduce a complete version of the game manual; summarizing the main rules and constraints usually suffices to convey an idea of what the game is about. In the case of digital games, however, we do not always know all the rules. The system is usually a black box and the player needs to figure out how it works in fact, this discovery can be one of the pleasures of playing a videogame.
