About the sound of bananas — Anti rules for audio game design

Designing audio games is a complex challenge that differs from video game design as they feature no visual output. For this reason a number of researchers conceived specific audio game design rules geared towards working with sound. In this paper, we provide complementing audio game anti rules that we collated from an extensive review process involving 157 audio game prototypes by interaction design students. We argue why anti rules can be a powerful means in preventing common mistakes in audio game design. In more detail, we present eleven anti rules which when followed are likely to spoil the user experience of an audio game. Hence, the approach in this paper is not to state what should be done (verified design guidelines), but to inform the designer which features will probably ruin an audio game (falsify the hypothesis or probability that it will be good and enjoyable).