BEST GAME DESIGN PRACTICES YOU CAN FOLLOW TO CREATE AN ENGAGING GAME
What if there are a set of principles that help you design a good game?
Sure, using the principles wouldn’t guarantee your game to be a massive success. Your game may not even be played a lot. But it would help you avoid a lot of common mistakes beginner developers make.
There are a few such guidelines you can follow. These are called game design practices.
Game Design Practices are a set of practices game designers around the world follow to design games in a better way. But before we dive into these practices, first let us take a look at what game design itself is.
What is Game Design?
Game design is the creation of the overall gaming experience-including mechanics, storyline, levels, challenges, etc.
The people who design the game are called game designers. Game designers are the chief architects of the game. All elements you see in your favorite game are the result of calculated design decisions that the designers of these games have made.
The Best Practices of Game Design
Just like how there are timeless practices in drama, literature, film, etc., there are timeless practices in game design.
Below, we have some of these best practices you can follow when you create your game’s design.
Bear in mind though that these practices are not universal. The approach designers take varies from one to another. It depends on the game designer’s preferences and experience.
1. Deconstruct Other Games
All great games today are influenced by other games the creators have played. Stardew Valley is influenced by Harvest Moon. Candy Crush likewise owes a lot to Bejeweled.
This is why deconstructing games is important. Deconstructing the games you love helps you learn important game design lessons from them.
The games don’t even have to be good. You can learn from bad games just as much as from good games. Because bad most of the time are goldmines for seekers of game design mistakes.
So play games. And analyze them as you are playing them. Observe how individual design elements interplay and combine to contribute to the overall gaming experience. Be it good or bad.
Also, look at deconstruction and post-mortem of games from others. From them, you can get insight into certain games without having to analyze these games yourself. A good resource you can use for this is the website Deconstructed for Fun.
2. Understand the Core Loop
A core loop is a sequence of actions your players repeat in your game, around which your entire game is built.
Take Clash of Clans. The game revolves around the loop of Collect, Build, and Expand. You collect important items, build your army, battle other clans, and expand your territory. Then the loop restarts and continues.
Hence, if your core loop is not solid, your game won’t be engaging.
So before you go start development, you must nail down your core loop. Spend time analyzing the core loop of your game and make sure it is solid from day one.
3. Documentation
A GDD (Game Design Document) is the document that contains all the details of your game. It will have comprehensive details of all the features, mechanics, storyline, technology used, etc. You usually create it during the beginning of production.
The creation of GDD is an important game design practice, as a good GDD acts like a production bible that anyone in the development team can refer to if they are stuck or have doubts. So, it should not only contain relevant information but must also be in an accessible language and format.
Your GDD, however, need not be immune to iterations. If you decide to implement new features and ideas down the line, you can add them to the GDD.
4. Prototyping
Prototyping is the act of developing a very basic version of your game to test its feasibility. It is meant for makers and not the users. Hence, a prototype usually has just the core mechanics with placeholder art.
If you create a prototype with only these minimal elements, you can understand if your game’s basic gameplay is engaging enough for you to continue further production. In case the prototype reveals that your gameplay is not, then you can either iterate your idea or scrap it altogether.
5. Ensure Proper Game Flow
Game flow as the name implies is the flow of your game’s overall experience. It is about your game’s levels, story beats, upgrades, etc., and how they are linked from one to another.
The two most important aspects of game flow are 1) logical progression and 2) proper pacing.
Logical progression serves the purpose of giving your players a sense of progress: of learning new things and bagging achievements. It also guides your players in the right direction in the game.
Meanwhile, the pacing is how slow or fast your game progresses. It depends on your game and its target audience. Stardew Valley is a game with a slow and relaxed pace. Doom Eternal on the other hand is fast-paced and chaotic.
6. Balance Your Game
Game balancing means ensuring that no element in your game is overpowered enough to become dominant in your game. It can be a strategy, a weapon, or a character.
An example of game balancing is the balancing of Dragon-type in Pokemon. The Dragon type has been in the game since Gen 1 and is among the most powerful
creatures in the game and is dominant in competitive circles. To end this dominance, the developers introduced a new type called Fairy that has a huge advantage over Dragon-type Pokemon.
Balancing your game in a similar way will make your game a better and more user- friendly experience.
Especially in games for which you do LiveOps. As you introduce additional elements you have to try to balance constantly. For instance, if you are continuing to add new weapons into your game, you have to make sure none of the new weapons are so overpowered that it becomes the dominant strategy in your game.
Conclusion
Following these game design practices does not guarantee success. Game development is not a domain where you can expect success after you follow a few steps.
Instead, consider these game design practices as a beginner’s guide. These are just the basics that you can later learn and expand on.
The best method to create a successful game with solid design is to hire a team of game designers. At Juego Studios, as a game development company, we have a team of game designers who have experience creating games of all genres. Our team has developed successful games across mobile, web, and desktop platforms.
