¶ What is Game Design?
Game design involves planning the overall structure, mechanics, and systems of a game, including how it plays, its goals, rules, and the player experience. We can split this into 2 parts, Concept Development and Game Design.
¶ Concept Development
¶ Brainstorm the Core Idea
This is where you decide on the type of game you want to make. Will it be an action game, a strategy game, a puzzle game, or something entirely unique. Most of all, you want to be excited to get started and passionate about your new game idea.
¶ Market Research
This is a crucial step to determine if people will actually want to play your game. Are there examples of games that are successful and have data to support this?
¶ Game Scope
What are the constraints you are going to enforce on your game initially? You’ll want to consider your project time frame along with your current expertise. It's always best to start of with something simple to get started and work up to more complex games once you grow in experience.
¶ Defining the player experience
Think about how you want the player to feel while playing. Do you want them to be excited, or generate tension like in a horror game. Do you want them to roam freely and lean into exploration, or perhaps spark their creativity with a sandbox style game.
What experience and emotions do you want the player to have? For example, typically in horror games you’ll want to instil some emotions of fear, anxiety, tension, perhaps even add some jump scares.
Other games such as Trials Obby create excitement with the thrill of finishing each level, whereas the game Dominos with Friends has a much more cosy and relaxed feel.
¶ Game Design
Here are some of the main elements that make up the overall game design structure:
¶ Game Core Loop
This is the series or chain of actions that is repeated over and over as the primary flow of your players experience. This can arguably be the most important part of your game as without a hooky, fun and addicting core loop, people simply won’t want to play.
Your core game loop should typically be short and be able to be completed in a short session. It needs to be simple and easy to instantly understand within the first 3-5 seconds.
¶ Game Core Mechanics
These are the essential actions a player will perform in your game (these can be things like, jumping, shooting, exploring etc. You also have Secondary mechanics which are the additional systems that support you core gameplay mechanics (e.g: inventory systems, crafting, leveling up).
¶ Game Rules, Objectives and Goals
These are the fundamental elements that define how the game is played, won and lost.
¶ Game Flow & Progression
This is how you design the game systems and how the gameplay progresses. Is it level-based, open-world, or a sandbox? Will there be increasing difficulty?
This progression and rhythm of the player’s experience throughout a game will determine how smoothly and logically a player moves from one action, challenge, or event to the next.
To ensure there’s a balanced and enjoyable gameplay experience, your game flow is crucial in keeping players engaged, offering them just the right amount of challenge and downtime along with guiding them through the game without confusion or frustration.
¶ Theme and Environment
This is the world, situation, theme and environment your game will take place in. Whilst you can let your imagination go wild here, try to ensure it makes sense within and the world law is consistent.
¶ Storyline and narrative
When we’re thinking of casual mobile games in particular, it’s very common not to have any deep storyline or narrative in our games. Often due to their casual nature, they are short experiences and unless you are specifically creating a narrative or storyline game, some environmental storytelling for context is typically more than enough and can be a powerful driver for Retention.
¶ Art & Aesthetics
This is what will be the look and vibe of your game. It’s super important regardless of the style to match the genre or type of game you’re creating.
Horror style games are often dark and moody so using a bright colour palette and the cutest kittens might not be the way to go here.
Most of all, consistency is crucial so avoid mixing and matching any assets that do not typically fit together to retain a cohesive style.
¶ Sound FX & Music
Just like Art and Aesthetics and the player experience, your game or background music, if you have any at all, will need to support the experience you’re aiming for.
You’ll also want to add Sound FX to re-enforce any actions in your game to provide feedback to the players. We have a vast library available inside the Asset Library so be sure not to neglect this.
¶ Monetisation
Can you have any items in your game for players to purchase to Monetise Your Game? Will you have boosts or special player characters or skins.
The economy in your game can be a great way to do this. Allow for perks, customisation and locked areas within your game that the player must pay to use. This is the backbone of free-to-play games.
In-app Purchases for in-game currency is a fantastic way to allow players to speed up their progress without spoiling their experience if balanced correctly.
There will be players that are happy to grind for items and upgrades, whilst others would prefer to fast track their progress.
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¶ Making a Good Game Great!
Exploring how dopamine triggers should play a pivotal role for player engagement in your game design.
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