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

Prototyping techniques

When it comes to creating a prototype, there are two main options – physical and digital.

You will be surprised to know how many times a physical prototype is used in the video game industry. Many game mechanics can be reproduced through board games, card games, miniature games, or just one sheet of paper with a pen and maybe a few coloring pencils.

Digital prototypes are a bit more complex to put together, but of course, their fidelity to the medium and ability to create real-time environments and handle complex calculations make them the go-to choice.

Most of the time, though, it is always a great idea to start very simple on paper and then move to digital when ideas become clearer. Remember that the main goal is to understand your design as soon and as quickly as possible, using the least number of resources.

Paper prototyping

Paper prototypes are my favorites. Making them is as quick as it takes to write on a piece of paper and cut out...