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I'm writing here about the Game Design of our first iPhone Game. It was also the first puzzle game I worked on. This first part is about the importance of defining the rules of the game.
Hi everyone, I’m currently working on the Level Design of our next iPhone game and I thought I could share things with someone, and it happens to be you. Perhaps you may take any interest in it.
Let me begin by a small reflection about one of our previous game: TURN. 
TURN screenshot
TURN screenshot 2
Actually, TURN’s rules could be well defined in a step-by-step based environment. You could play “paper TURN”, despite it’s a bit slow and boring to move each item separately. However, that’s the way you should write and test such puzzle game rules before sending them to any coder if you want them to love you :). Because if you can explain and detail every behavior, you save time and mental sanity. And actually, that’s your job if you’re a Game Designer, you’re here to design game mechanics.
Each TURN action could be divided into those rules:
First of all, you check what items are in a “moving” state. A “moving” state means that the item possesses inertia due to the player’s action (rotation or push).
Each item is ranked upon its location. The “first” one is at the bottom – left or right of the screen (that depends on the rotating direction since rolling stones should carry on their move smoothly). That rank is very important to determine which item we move first on each turn. Bad definition of this could result in severe issues during multiple falls, the bottom crate blocking the upper ones.
The screen is divided into squares, and movement is based on these squares. We move items square by square, so that there isn’t any overlapping issue occurring.
You repeat this until there is no longer any item in a “moving” state.
Each item has also a unique behavior: for example crates fall in straight line while stones roll to the left or to the right depending on the room rotation direction.
TURN screenshot 3
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