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

Summary

In this chapter, we saw how to create interesting characters and give them a specific function in the game world, whether they are playable characters, NPCs, or enemies. You learned how to define a character through a system of numerical stats, abilities, or a control system. We have walked through a playable character design process and put together a pretty cool new Overwatch hero! We also took a closer look at what makes enemies interesting and villains memorable – their motivations, backstories and points of view in the game world.

Finally, we made some important considerations about the concept of diversity and how important it is, in our modern society, to keep that in mind as a part of our creative process.

The next stop is Chapter 11, Balancing Your Content and Systems, where you will learn how to approach balancing your content, adjusting the difficulty, and understanding the concepts of pacing and flow.