Practical Game Design - Second Edition

7

Making Prototypes

At this point in the book, you might have realized that, practical as it may be, game design happens in a designer’s head first and on a document of some sort second, and only in the third step it is possible to shape it into a playable game.

To actually make a game happen, the designer has to get their hands on a tool that allows them to create working software. Not all game designers are programmers, and even if they know how to write code, designing and programming are two different jobs both requiring a person’s full attention (and the bigger the project, the harder it is to bend this rule).

That said, a playable game is not necessarily a finished, high-quality product ready for release. There is one technique that game ...