I recommend reading through the COG contest thread and guidelines from 2016. Although it was five years ago and some things may be outdated or obsolete, there are some documents discussing the COG “house style” and design requirements—entries in the contest had to follow these guidelines to be published as an official COG game! However, as Gower said, I don’t think there’s necessarily a hard and fast “strict formula” that has to be followed—these are basic requirements like gender choice or wordcount and some game philosophy, but I believe authors get a lot of leeway and freedom to develop their creative projects in directions they like!
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