Designing Games
Designing video games is a task that should not be forgotten. This is something that needs to be done way before code is started. It’s like the blue print of your game and if you don’t have that then how will you know what to do?
What should get done first when designing games? A few things actually. The design document should contain the summary, target audience, platform, genre, core gameplay, visual style and storyline.
Game Design Summary
The summary should contain only a few sentences to describe your game. It’s like an elevator pitch or another example is the few lines of text on the back of the boxes for games that grab your attention. Think this through and make sure you’ve chosen the right words!
Target Audience
Your target audience is important for designing games. The target audience should be the people who you think will be playing your game. Some examples would be, casual gamers, teens, adults, children. There are quite a bit to choose from, but make sure it’s the right choice.
Platform, Genre, and Game Play
It’s easier to just put these three together in the post, however they should be kept separate and thought of as different when writing your document. Platform can be anything from PC, handheld, mobile, or console. Some of these platforms are free to develop for while others are not. An example is for mobile. A fee is required just to add your game to the App Store or Android Play.
Genre is more about the type of game you’re creating. It can be a First Person Shooter, Role Playing Game, or Real Time Strategy. There are a lot more genres out there, and you can actually mix and match them to come up with something unique.
When talking about Game Play you talk more about Goals and rewards when designing games. What goals does the player have to do in order to win and what are their rewards.
Visual Style & Storyline
The visual style of the game is important. It can be, and it’s not limited to, 2D pixel art or it can be a massive 3D world with high texture quality.
Storyline is important to add to the document as long as there is one. It can be something simple, none at all or something that’s very elaborate.
That’s it for now on designing games. I’ll be to include a full document example in the future!
This is part of series on How to Make Video Games