design-game — Claude Code skill: game visual design pass

---
name: design-game
description: Audit and improve the visual design, polish, and player experience of an existing game. Use when the user says "make my game look better", "improve the design", "add polish", "add juice", "add particles", "fix the UI", or "make it more visually appealing". Do NOT use for gameplay logic changes (use add-feature instead).
argument-hint: "[path-to-game]"
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: OpusGameLabs
  version: 1.3.0
  tags: [game, design, polish, ui, particles, visual]
---

## 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:** ~~/viral-game~~ → ~~/design-game~~ → `/add-audio` → `/qa-game` → `/review-game`
>
> *(This is the `/viral-game` one-shot pipeline — not the `/make-game` multi-session, milestone-driven workflow.)*