Game Design

• Things we need to define in game design

  • Player Experience: The specific the better
    • Careful? Clever?
  • Core Mechanics
    • Move and dodge?
  • Game loop
    • Get from A to B

• Onion design

  • You might have loooots of questions, but just ask yourself first: “What is the core mechanic?”
    • What is the most important thing for your game that without it it’s not your game anymore?
    • Then figure out the 2nd, 3rd most important stuff
  • All other layers need to be feeding in the core layer to make it better
  • For example, for my rocket game,it would be
    1. Movement/flying
    2. World collision
    3. Level progression

Useful game design approach

• Design “moments” and then expand them into a level.
• Moments that use the environment
  • Fly under
  • Fly over
  • Fly through a (moving) gap
  • Time your flight through moving obstacles
  • Land on a moving platform
  • Fly through long narrow tunnel

When to tune your gameplay

• You add feature
• Then fix thosebugs
• Then tune the gameplay
• Then playtest it, tune, gamepla, tune (repeat)
• Then add new feature
• Repeat