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

The hands-on game designer


If you tried to create some paper prototypes, you might have found answers to your questions. If you did right, you might also have even more questions.

One question could be: does it really work like this? Absolutely yes.

Prototyping is about discovering, trying, and making mistakes. If you don't try, you will never learn. The next step would be trying to create something in the digital world. Here things become tougher because you might not have any programming skills and probably not even know where to start. Mark these words: by learning how to use a game engine and program basic game mechanics and small prototypes, you will be ahead of any aspiring game designers who don't have this skill.

This is the real skill that will always give you an edge over the thousands of other designers that will be competing with you for the few design roles available in the game industry. Reading and studying is the bare minimum, so don't think that by reading this and many other...