Beginning Android 4 Games Development

Game Design: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Code

As we said earlier, it is rather tempting to fire up the IDE and just hack together a nice tech demo. This is OK if you want to prototype experimental game mechanics and see if those actually work. However, once you do that, throw away the prototype. Pick up a pen and some paper, sit down in a comfortable chair, and think through all high-level aspects of your game. Don't concentrate on technical details yet—you'll do that later on. Right now, you want to concentrate on designing the user experience of your game. The best way to do this is by sketching up the following things:

• The core game mechanics, including a level concept if applicable.
• A rough backstory with the main characters.
• A list of ...