TABLE OF CONTENTS Now that we ve looked at the basic elements of games, it s time to walk through the process of designing a game of your own. This may seem overwhelming at first, especially if your goal is to create a game like the ones you see on the shelves of your local game store filled with complex animations and elaborate programming. So before we even think of discussing these aspects, let s back away from the ultimate goal and take the process of design step by step from the beginning.
First, we ll discuss conceptualization coming up with ideas for your games. This may be easy for you you may already have an idea of the game you want to make. But what if you can t get support for your one idea? What will you do then? We ll show you how you can train yourself to become an idea person, someone for whom ideas come as easily as breathing. That way, you won t be stuck with just one idea when opportunity knocks.
Once you have your idea, you ll need to formalize it many designers jump right to writing a design document at this point, but we ll show you how to prototype your idea and get playtesters involved very early in the process. The iterative design process that we outlined in Chapter 1 on page 11 is detailed in Chapters 7...
