Magic Spells
If there are spells (or things which come down to spells, such as alien artifacts) then each should be used at least twice in the game, preferably in different contexts, and some many times. But, and this is a big 'but', the majority of puzzles should be soluble by hand

- or else the player will start to feel that it would save a good deal of time and effort just to find the "win game" spell and be done with it.

Magic has to be part of the mythology of a game to work.

Research
Design usually begins with, and is periodically interrupted by, research. This can be the most entertaining part of the project and is certainly the most rewarding,
... History crowds with fugitive tales. Finding an eyewitness account is always a plea-
sure:

Prologue
The prologue has two vital duties. Firstly, it has to establish an atmospherelland
give out a little background information.

Similarly, most games begin with something relatively mundane (the guild-house in 'Sorcerer', Kensington Gardens in 'Trinity') or else they include the exotic with dream-sequences.

The Middle Game
Some games, such as the original Adventure, are very wide?"there are thirty or so puzzles, all easily available, none leading to each other. Othere. Buch as "Spellbreaker'. are very narrow: a long sequence of puzzles, each of which leads only to a chance to solve the next.

So a first-draft design of the middle game may just consist of a rough sketch of a map divided into zones, with an idea for some event or meeting to take place in each, together with some general ideas for objects.

The End Game
End games serve two purposes. Firstly they give the player a sense of being near to success, and can be used to culminate the plot, to reveal the game's secrets. This is obvious enough. They also serve to stop the final stage of the game from being too hard.

As a designer, you don't usually want the last step to be too difficult; you want to give the player the satisfaction of finishing, as a reward for having got through the game.

End Game
In a novelist's last chapter, ends are always tied up (suspiciously neatly compared with real life - Jane Austen being a particular offender, though always in the interests of humour). The characters are all sent off with their fates worked out and issues which cropped up from time to time are settled. So should the end game be.

Looking back, as if you were a winning player, do you understand why everything that happened did? (Of course, some questions will forever remain dark. Who did kill the chauffeur in 'The Big Most Sleep’?)

But a good rule of thumb, as any film screenplay writer will testify, seems to be to make the two scenes which open and close the story "book-ends" for each other: in some way symmetrical and matching.