Note that I expect you to have downloaded and played a bit with a game engine in order to understand the very basics of how games are created. What hitboxes are, what raycasting is, how a tile system works for 2D games and so forth. If you have not tried to play around with a game engine I would personally suggest Godot as it is very lightweight (it is small and runs easily) and feels like the most accessible engine for complete beginners. Unreal Engine and Unity is also completely fine, and every engine has a lot of similar systems and functionality. Having a basic understanding of what is difficult and what is easy to implement is very important in game design.
This section of the site is dedicated to exploring how games work, and how games are designed. Before we can talk about game design we first need to establish what game design actually is.
One of the definitions the britannica dictonary uses for design is: “to plan and make (something) for a specific use or purpose“. This is the definition of design I think best fits in the context of games.
The next question we need to answer is what is a game? The best overarching way to describe a game is that they provide an experience through interaction.
Game design as I use the term is the aspect of how you create a specific experience through interactions. It is important to specify that a game usually does not focus on a single experience, but on a whole range of different experiences. The experience can also change throughout a game, it is not a static or singular experience.
Game experiences
The best point of starting is therefore by splitting the types of experiences into groups. There are other ways to think about games and game design, but this is my preferred way of thinking about it. The table below links to examples of experiences and a more in-depth discussion of the different experiences games can offer. Some experiences work well together, and some usually work against each other. There are countless techniques and ways you can create different experience
Keep in mind that people are different, they both prefer different things, but they also experience aspects of games in different ways. What someone feels is an incredible narrative experience, can be mediocre for someone else. There is no real wrong or right experience. Because people experience things differently it is often a good idea to have a wide range of people test your games to uncover unforseen experiences people might have. There is no possible world in which you create a good challenging experience for every single person, you need to know both the target experience and the target audience.
| Challenge | Creativity | Progression | Narrative | Social | Presentation |
Game communication & player input
Every game needs two things in order to be a game. The first thing a game needs is an ability to communicate information to the player, that means either visual elements from a screen or audio. The second thing a game needs is an ability for the player to interact with the information a game provides. How exactly you do these two things varies quite significantly between different games, which you soon can read more about here. (link currently missing, and page is being written).
Creating a game
There is no single correct way to design a game. There is no single correct way to approach game design, and no correct order in which to do things. There are a few ways you can start out when creating a game from scratch.
You can mess around in a game engine until you suddenly like the experience you have created and build on that. This way does not require an understanding of how games work, it is simply about feeling that it works. Then continuing to build while always checking back on what feels right and what feels wrong. Keep what feels good and throw away what feels bad. This is essentially a trial and error approach, and great games can be created from this approach. There is nothing wrong with this approach if this is how you prefer to create games, but it is not something I like.
I am a planner by nature, and I like to think thing before act. I don’t like to do more work than needed, and I like a clear plan and idea before I begin to execute on it. The initial thought or idea can be based on a gameplay loop or it can be based upon a desire to design a game around a certain experience. You might want to have the core gameplay feature shooting mechanics for example, and use that as a base to figure out what type of shooter experience you want. You might want to create a very challenging game, and use that as a base to figure out what the gameplay should be to produce that experience. It is possible to have a narrative you want to tell, and then you need to figure out what gameplay you should use to provide the best narrative experience.