Week 7 · Lab

What Is an Interaction?

An introduction to Construct 3

Before any tutorial

That loop is interaction. Everything in Construct is built on top of it.

The one sentence that matters most

Construct is a tool for building
interactive systems.
Not an order to make a specific kind of game.

Almost the entire pedagogy of this lab is that one line. Repeat it every time someone asks “how do I make a game where: ”.

Ask this instead

Not: “What do you want the player to see?”

Instead: “What do you want the player to have to do here?”

That single swap pulls them out of graphics and genre and into interaction design, before you've mentioned a single Construct feature.

Then push once more

What must the player do here that they wouldn't do if this were just a piece of text?

A question that works equally well for game studies and for electronic literature. Bring it back for every idea, all semester.

Demystify Construct

Sprites, collisions, scores and platforms are examples. Not requirements.

• An event sheet is really just a rule: if this happens, then this happens
• That can describe a jump
• It can just as easily describe waiting, silence, negotiation, refusal, or memory

Say this out loud in the lab. It costs nothing and it changes what students think the software is for.

You should come away understanding

• layout
• objects
• behaviours
• events
• conditions
• actions
• variables, if time permits
• basic input → response logic

Think in rules before effects

Before “how do I make this animation?” · ask “what is the rule?”

All four are the same shape: a condition and a consequence. Only the first one is a “game mechanic.”

Borrow a lens before you build

Analyse a game you already know · before touching Construct

• What do the rules make possible?
• What do the rules make impossible?
• What am I forced to perform?
• What story emerges here that no one, not even the designer, wrote in advance?

Borrowed from game studies / electronic literature: rules & mechanics, agency, roleplay, emergent narrative. Same four questions come back in Week 10: aimed at Trail Mix, a real interactive walk, instead of a generic game.

First 10–15 minutes

Build the ugliest possible tiny prototype

• A square.
• Press arrow key.
• Square moves.

“This is already an interactive system. Not because it has graphics, but because an action has a rule and a consequence.”

Show one weird demo. Not ten.

Nothing happens when you click. Wait ten seconds.

Then show them the event sheet. Three lines. That's the moment they realise electronic literature and game design don't require a huge technical system.

Build together

• Player
• Object
• Solid / platform
• Keyboard control
• Collision
• Simple event

Construct events almost as English, this makes the tool much less intimidating.

Tiny interaction experiments

Before making anything bigger, make three interactions

What else could this variable represent?

Besides “score”…

• trust
• fear
• distance
• memory
• noise
• pollution
• attention
• time
• belonging

This is where your pedagogical approach starts entering very naturally.

The method, in one exchange · pedagogy → rhetoric → programming

A student wants to make something about loneliness

Let their idea drive the technique

If someone wants a completely ordinary platformer, great.

Don't make experimentation a new norm they have to follow instead of the old one. You're opening the option space, not swapping one right answer for another.

End challenge

Make one interaction that communicates something
without text.

• object runs away from player
• world gets darker
• sound becomes louder
• objects appear when approached
• movement slows down
• something follows you
• something refuses interaction

Ask afterward: what does this make the player do that a sentence describing the same idea would not?

When something breaks

Don't just hand them the fix.
Ask: “What does Construct think the state is right now?”

That question teaches events, conditions, state and causality. The fix alone teaches nothing.

When it finally works

Don't stop at “it works.”

Ask: what does this rule do to the experience?

That's the question that moves them from programming to design.

Next week

What happens when the rules stay the same but the images don't?

Carry this into every Construct lab

Don't start with what Construct can make.
Start with what you want the interaction to do.