Book Image

Practical Game Design - Second Edition

By : Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci
Book Image

Practical Game Design - Second Edition

By: Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci

Overview of this book

If you’re in search of a cutting-edge actionable guide to game design, your quest ends here! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with expert guidance from veterans with decades of game design experience across a variety of genres and platforms. The second edition of this book remains dedicated to its original goal of helping you master the fundamentals of game design in a practical manner with the addition of some of the latest trends in game design and a whole lot of fresh, real-world examples from games of the current generation. This update brings a new chapter on games as a service, explaining the evolving role of the game designer and diving deeper into the design of games that are meant to be played forever. From conceptualizing a game idea, you’ll gradually move on to devising a design plan and adapting solutions from existing games, exploring the craft of producing original game mechanics, and eliminating anticipated design risks through testing. You’ll then be introduced to level design, interactive storytelling, user experience and accessibility. By the end of this game design book, you’ll have learned how to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the challenges of designing free-to-play games and games as a service, and significantly improve their quality through iteration, playtesting, and polishing.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
12
Chapter 12: Building a Great User Interface and User Experience

Enemies

We previously discussed that every good story puts characters in front of some sort of conflict. And nothing is better than the personification of the conflict itself, the baddies – villains, monsters, and enemies.

Despite the fact that all these guys intend to kill the player, they serve the higher purpose of letting the player have fun (while they avoid being killed). However, the question is, how are enemies designed?

The answer, as often happens in game design, is not a simple one and depends on the type of game we’re talking about. Simple enemies, in the same way as other characters, exist to exert a function. Villains and bosses do that too, but they also need to be memorable and as interesting as the main characters.

Games with deeper narratives rely on well-constructed villains to oppose the protagonist, while more arcade and less narrative-heavy games need enemies that offer a challenging focus on the gameplay.

Types of villains

There are...