Game Design
Stéphanie Bouchard, an awesome & talented game designer at Ubisoft, came in and talked about important game design concepts to the Pixelles:
What is a Concept Document?
In most game dev studios, a game’s first form is a pitch document — a general idea you can express in a few sentences and maybe an illustration or diagram. The next stage is the concept document! Even independent developers find it useful to make a concept document to fully flesh out their idea and figure out how to communicate what is exciting about it, and how that takes shape within the game world.
→ Word format
→ PDF format
Mostly Free Game-Making Tools
It’s up to you to explore and find the right tool for you. We’ve listed some genre-specific ones but that doesn’t mean that something like Stencyl or GameMaker won’t do the job just as great.
| NON-PROGRAMMING TOOLS | |
| 2D | GameMaker (Windows only) Stencyl Construct 2 (Windows only) Game Salad |
| 3D | Unity + Playmaker ($) |
| Text-Based | Inform7 Twine StoryNexus Inklewriter |
| RPG | RPG Maker VX Ace Lite (Windows only) Stencyl‘s RPG template |
| Strategy | Turn-based Strategy add-on for GameMaker (Windows only) |
| Adventure | Adventure Game Studio (Windows only) |
| Fighting | M.U.G.E.N. (Windows only?) 2d Fighter Maker 2002 (Windows only?) |
| CODING KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED TOOLS | |
| 3D | Unity Unreal Development Kit (Windows only) |
| 2D | Unity Flashpunk Flixel LÖVE |
| Point ‘n Click / Adventure | Adventure Game Studio (Windows only) |
| Puzzle | Puzzlescript |
| Visual Novel | Ren’Py |
Want more tools? PixelProspector offers a pretty thorough breakdown of all the tools out there! (table below is in progress)
Still can’t decide? Try reading this Indie’s Guide to Game-Making to help narrow down your choices. (Thanks Elise for the find!)
Meet Up
Come out to the meetups to work on your game and support other first-time game makers. Feel free to bring a friend or, if you’re an already established game maker, encourage & support others. See you there!
Where: Notman House (51 Sherbroooke Ouest)
When: Sunday, Jan. 19th, from 2 to 5pm
Bring: Your laptop + game ideas (there will be internet)
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/190302001176407/?ref=25
Homework
- Pick your game-making tool, framework, or language.
- Get your game’s environment set up — have the tool, basic scene, and your placeholder data ready to work on for next week. It’s OK if your character doesn’t move, for example, but have a placeholder image (if your game has characters) to represent it.
- Write a concept document for your game using the example template. Remember you should use lots of images, even ones from Google image search, to get your point across. Include at least one very basic illustration/diagram of what the game screen will look like to the player.
Don’t hesitate to send us any questions, ask for feedback, or bounce ideas. Use the forums! You can send us e-mails at info@pixelles.ca.
