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

A step-by-step guide to prototyping


Here follows a step-by-step process for developing an effective prototype. These steps can be used to prototype an entire game or just a single feature, or maybe just to evaluate a change to an existing system.

Step 1: Ask the right questions

Whether the prototype is for trying out a game idea or a new mechanic or to evaluate and improve something within your game, you need to have a clear problem in mind and how you imagine the prototype is going to solve it. Never start prototyping if you don’t know what you need to evaluate or prove.

Note

What would make a good question? And a bad one? Usually, good questions are specific. Asking whether a mechanic is fun or not would be a bad question. What do we mean by fun? A better question would probably be: does this mechanic provide enough decision-making for the player? Are his choices meaningful?

Step 2: Select the framework and tools

Paper or digital prototyping? If paper, is it going to need anything other than...