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

Tips for closing a game project


As we have seen, in an ideal world, the closing phase of a game project should take more time than the sum of each of the previous stages. But that's unlikely to happen in the real world - on the contrary, it is highly probable that you'll find yourself with much less time than expected to wrap everything up.

Here is a list of tips and practices to avoid sacrificing polishing, proper user testing and, in the worst cases, procrastinating a game's release:

  • Review the game concept and game design pillars: Cut anything that doesn't reflect them. The sooner this review is done, the better it is, but don't be afraid to cut a feature that appears to be in contrast with the original concept, even if it has been partially or fully developed.
  • Have a UX review: Let a professional UX researcher study your game. A UX review will provide you with extremely useful insights and a lot of actionable points to improve the quality of your game.
  • Get the game out there: Let other professional...