Make me a platformer about a small square. Give its run tight acceleration and its jump coyote time, a jump buffer, variable height and a fast fall. Add squash and stretch, follow-through, dust on landing, hit stop and screen shake on a stomp. Let the camera look ahead. Light it at golden hour with parallax, atmospheric perspective and bloom. Score it with adaptive music.

Tell a designer or an agent to make it feel good, and you get a guess. Tell them coyote time, a jump buffer and a fast fall, and you get the game you meant.

Gamecraft has 462 words for making games: how a jump feels, why people keep playing, how a place teaches without text, what a story can do that a film can’t. 423 of them are toys, so you learn the word by playing with it. Start with the plainest one. A game’s verbs are what the player can do.