A Hacker’s Starter Pack for Game Design Hacks
Video games are ubiquitous in our society. They make up a 135 billion dollar industry with double digit growth [ref]. They’re also perfect projects for hackathons! At first glance, game design seems intimidating. However, with the right tools and technology, building games can be very accessible.
So what is game design? Simply speaking, game design is the process of applying design principles in order to create a game. This Free Code Camp article may help you understand the process of creating a game and what considerations you need to take.
To get started, you have to plan out your project. In order to be organized and keep track of all of your ideas, it’s a good idea to build a game design document. Check out this article from the National STEM Video Game Challenge for a description of game design documents and some helpful examples.
Next, you need to decide what tools you are using to build your game. Here is a list of game development tools. We highly recommend checking out Unity, a really powerful application to help you build beautiful and professional-level games quickly. If you’re interested, check out these tutorials for Unity development!
Finally, here’s a list of miscellaneous resources to help you get started with development:
- Introduction to Game Design in 3 Minutes
- Unity’s Game Developer Advice: A series of 4 videos from unity to get you started on developing your game
- Extra Credit’s video series on game development: Helpful videos discussing many aspects of Game Design and Development.
- This Reddit Game Design Guide: A very definitive and specific resource to help you on more specific problems you may encounter throughout your project
- The Game Maker’s Toolkit: A YouTube channel full of really useful critique and analysis of game elements and mechanics.
- GDC Vault: Talks from influential people in the game development industry.
- Noah Caldwell Gervais: In-depth gaming reviews.
- Magic: The Gathering Podcasts: Mark Rosewater’s (Designer of Magic: The Gathering) podcasts on game design.
- The Pretentious Game Design podcasts: Another great podcast on game design.
Good luck and happy hacking!
Thanks to Nitish Padavala (Cal Poly CS ‘21) for putting together this guide!
