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

Finding the right reference


How can you create a game mechanic based on an existing one? How do you find the right reference to start creating your own?

The first step is to look for games that include mechanics and features similar to what you are envisioning for your game. Your game concept should give you a clear idea of which games you should look at.

At this point, you should have a clear idea of who your competitors are (as we have seen in Chapter 2, Game Concept) and it is important to look at your competition's game mechanics with special attention. This is for two reasons:

  • Here you will find the basic mechanics of your game
  • It will give you a clear idea of how games similar to yours play. Your goal is to make something different in the end, not just copy-paste what's already been done!

Let's make some practical examples.

Let's say you are building a Real-Time Strategy game and need to define how resources are collected and managed:

In Age of Empires, the player needs to gather the resources...