8 Essential Stages of Mobile Game Development
Advancements in technology have led the mobile game trend to the new heights in comparison to the traditional snake games! Usage of Smartphones has even highly scaled up within these recent years. Mobile game development market has skyrocketed for the high-end improvements of hardware of the mobile devices.
This has created a wide variety and high resulting possibilities for the enterprises! Bringing game app development idea into real life is quite a challenging task. Mobile game development involves different stages of planning, designing, execution, and deployment of the game app on the targeted app store. Apart from using robust tech tools, it is essential to have expertise about different stages of game development as well.
It is recommended to follow the agile development methodologies for developing mobile games that would result in successful and impressive game apps. Pre-production, Production and Post-production are the major stages of mobile game development. These major stages are further divided into different stages which are the essential steps to follow.

8 Major Stages to Follow For Mobile Game App Development
1. Game Idea
The idea of the game is indeed the initiation of the development process. The game idea could be completely new or can be an inspiration from a successful game. Game app development idea must be able to draw out the essential points. Who are the targeted players, Why would a player get attracted to play the game, Would the game be able to fulfill the requirements of the players, What elements must be added for engaging the players, Is the game filled with fun, What are the best integrated elements in the game that could surprise the players, etc. are few of the questions which must be considered while developing a game idea
2. Idea Refinement And Concept Development
Idea refinement is the next stage of mobile game development. This usually defined as storyline building that involves developing the lead character, story plot and the overall theme of the game. In this stage, the goal of the game and control is identified. The concept of game development includes a quick overview and representation of the building blocks of the game. The overview of the game includes detailed aspects about game mechanics, settings, technology and interactions.
3. Developing The Proof Concept
The third stage of mobile game development is to develop the proof of concept. The entire concept must be verified sooner! This would answer the questions that are essential for developing an engaging game app. Whether the integrated tech features would handle the task, Is the entire setting appealing and Is the game is enough engaging or not and What are the chosen controls, these are such questions that must be answered.
4. Game Design Documentation
Once the entire concept of the game is drafted, it’s time to proceed towards the production stage. A team of game designers, programmers and QA testing professionals assemble to develop the concept. Creating a game design document is highly essential for designing the game. This is considered as a living and detailed document which is completely depended upon the feedbacks.
Also Read: Difference Between Gamification and Game Based Learning
5. Creating Prototypes
After getting assured about the mechanics after the tests, it is essential to create a playable prototype for the targeted platform. This prototype must include the important mechanics as well as resemble the significant parts of the game.
Though creating prototype would consume considerable time, it is essential as it would determine the mistakes of the game design. If the game controls are non-intuitive and certain tasks are hard to solve, then the players would behave differently. In this stage, most of the issues can be solved easily.
6. Designing Architecture
Game functions are generally evolved in the development stage. The looks and behavior of the game are completely different than the plans in the initial phase. Within the development process, several ideas arise with the technical variations. For the ever-changing nature, a mobile game development it requires highly flexible architectural solutions based on the modular approach. Designing such architecture is a tough task indeed, but it is an essential phase of game development.
7. Implementation Of Game
Once the architecture designs and the prototypes are ready, the game developer team proceed ahead towards the final implementation. Following the agile methodologies, the designer designs the game based on the planned theme. The art designing involves game play, the levels, menus and promotional arts. The programmers develop a game logic for the iteration which is completely based on the designed art. The core game play or UI/UX is implemented based on the iteration.
8. Game Testing
QA testing is done by a team of highly qualified testers. These testers ensure to maintain the quality of the game before deploying on different targeted platforms. Before releasing the game, the unfinished game is exposed to a certain range of potential players. By collecting feedbacks from the players, the efficiency of the game can be measured.
