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

Developing an idea into an experience

As we discussed in Chapter 4, Creating Design Documentation, every design process should start with the definition of some goals and requirements.

When creating a feature, you should always keep in mind the following questions:

  • What is the goal of the feature?
  • Are there any constraints?
  • What mechanics are going to be combined into a system?
  • What is the feedback to the player?

The kind of game you are developing and its vision should guide you through the answers. Let’s say you are working on an action medieval-fantasy game where melee combat is your core feature. The first mechanic you’ll be focusing on is probably going to be the action of attacking an enemy.

What is the purpose of the combat system?

Regardless of the theme of your game and its vision, the fact that we are talking about an action game already provides some insights. An action-oriented combat game challenges the player’s...