Book Image

Practical Game Design

By : Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci
Book Image

Practical Game Design

By: Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci

Overview of this book

If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Putting the pieces together


It's very unlikely that a game would take its final shape by linearly expanding from its narrative beginning to its ultimate ending. During the development, some pieces of the game are developed as modules and all these modules are put together when a playable of some sort is required. But maybe after the Alpha is out, some extra iteration is required to sort out problems and those pieces need to be re-shuffled for the Beta or the next version. Again, it is possible that this task would come at the last moment.

Depending on the size of the project, the designer might have a big responsibility in putting everything together. Usually, the designers are in charge of setting up the whole game content. Maybe the beta version included only a single level or mission, and that one was put together as best as possible for the Beta phase. Now it is time to create and introduce the rest of those missions, quest, dialogs, characters, and levels.

Feature creep

Once the game is...