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

Game difficulty


It's up to the game and level designers to create an experience that's optimal for as many players as possible, and if that seems like a simple task, trust us when we say it's not!

As we have already established in Chapter 12, Accessibility, our audience varies greatly in their level of gaming experience, real-world knowledge, physical and mental capacity, and even language proficiency. From pattern recognition and memory to spatial navigation, reflexes, and hand-eye coordination, there are many skills at play, and in some departments, the gap between players can be huge. Moreover, some players like to be challenged, and others have little time and patience for a serious struggle, preferring to breeze through levels and experience the story with relative ease.

There are many ways of addressing the difficulty gap. Some rely on pre-set attributes and redesigning the game content, while others are fully automatic and respond to player’s performance. No matter which solution you...