Week 7: Context

Week 7 — why the studio exercise stays at two mechanics, and what gets harder once that number grows

5 April 2027

Nothing about “one button” was ever a limit on how many things a press can mean — only on how many things can be pressed at once. Context is where that distinction stops being a slogan and starts being a mechanic: a single piece of state decides which of the vocabulary built in weeks 1–6 currently applies to the same press.

This week’s studio exercise deliberately keeps the switch small — two mechanics, one piece of state — because the hard part of context-switching isn’t picking mechanics, it’s making the switch itself legible: a player who’s never seen either mode has to read which one is active from what’s on screen, not from trial and error. Two mechanics is enough to prove you can do that cleanly. The Context Switch assessment later in the course asks for the same technique again, unprompted, at three mechanics or more — by then legibility gets harder precisely because there’s more for a player to keep straight, and that assessment is testing whether the technique still holds once the switch stops being the easy case.

Outline#

• mode-dependent meaning: reinterpreting existing vocabulary through state, rather than adding to it
• why the studio exercise stops at two mechanics, and what specifically gets harder as that number grows
• legibility, not variety, as this week’s actual design problem