Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development, 2nd Edition

Master the Unity Game Engine to Design and Develop Games for Web, Mobile, Windows, macOS, and More!

If you want to design and develop games, there’s no substitute for strong hands-on experience with modern techniques and tools—and that is exactly what this book provides. The first edition was frequently the top-selling game design book on Amazon, with more than 70% of the reviews being 5 stars. In a testament to the iterative process of design, this new edition includes hundreds of improvements throughout the text, all designed to make the book easier to understand and even more useful. This book was written with Unity 2017; the book.prototools.net website will cover changes for later versions of the software.

Award-winning game designer and professor Jeremy Gibson Bond has spent more than a decade teaching game design and building great games. In that time, his most successful students have been those who combine knowledge of three critical disciplines: game design theory, rapid iterative prototyping, and practical programming. In this book, Bond distills the most important aspects of all three disciplines into one place.

Table of Contents

Part I Game Design and Paper Prototyping
Chapter 1 Thinking Like a Designer
Chapter 2 Game Analysis Frameworks
Chapter 3 The Layered Tetrad
Chapter 4 The Inscribed Layer
Chapter 5 The Dynamic Layer
Chapter 6 The Cultural Layer
Chapter 7 Acting Like a Designer
Chapter 8 Design Goals
Chapter 9 Paper Prototyping
Chapter 10 Game Testing
Chapter 11 Math and Game Balance
Chapter 12 Guiding the Player
Chapter 13 Puzzle Design
Chapter 14 The Agile Mentality
Chapter 15 The Digital Game Industry

Part II Digital Prototyping
Chapter 16 Thinking in Digital Systems
Chapter 17 Introducing the Unity Development Environment
Chapter 18 Introducing Our Language: C#
Chapter 19 Hello World: Your First Program
Chapter 20 Variables and Components
Chapter 21 Boolean Operations and Conditionals
Chapter 22 Loops
Chapter 23 Collections in C#
Chapter 24 Functions and Parameters
Chapter 25 Debugging
Chapter 26 Classes
Chapter 27 Object-Oriented Thinking

Part III Game Prototype Examples and Tutorials
Chapter 28 Prototype 1: Apple Picker
Chapter 29 Prototype 2: Mission Demolition
Chapter 30 Prototype 3: Space SHMUP
Chapter 31 Prototype 3.5: Space SHMUP Plus
Chapter 32 Prototype 4: Prospector Solitaire
Chapter 33 Prototype 5: Bartok
Chapter 34 Prototype 6: Word Game
Chapter 35 Prototype 7: Dungeon Delver

Part IV Appendices
Appendix A Standard Project Setup Procedure
Appendix B Useful Concepts
Appendix C Online Reference