Exploring Game Mechanics

Learn simple yet powerful, modern-day techniques used in various gaming genres, including casual and puzzle, strategy and simulation, action-adventure, and role-playing. This book is your pocket-sized guide to designing interesting and engaging mechanics for any type of game.

Exploring Game Mechanics is a cornucopia of concepts related to gameplay mechanics that you can use to create games that are fun and rewarding to play. Dive into key gameplay elements that improve the player experience, such as implementing in-game tutorials, controlling the flow of player-choice-based games, and building a game narrative through storytelling. Understand how to establish the game’s end goal for the player to work towards by creating quests, missions, and objectives. Explore the key ideas behind creating immersive game worlds, generating better NPCs and enemies, and controlling the in-game economy. Finally, discover the unique mechanics that make established industry games so successful.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

* Discover the key elements that make gameplay immersive and entertaining
* Develop players and NPCs through customization and levelling up
* Gain insight into the tried-and-tested concepts behind modern-day games

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR

Game development enthusiasts with little to no knowledge of game mechanics will find the content informative and useful. MAITHILI DHULe is an Engineer by profession, writer by choice, and an aspiring game developer at heart. She is the author of Beginning Game Development with Godot, a beginner’s guide to creating and publishing 2D Platform games from scratch. After a friend introduced her to the art of creating games, it quickly became one of her passions. She can be found creating pixel art or being immersed in one of her favorite games in her free time. She also enjoys trying out new restaurants, sketching portraits, writing poetry, and going for runs while listening to a good music playlist.

CHAPTER 1: WHY DO WE PLAY GAMES?

Sub –topics:

• What players look for in a game: Novelty, creativity, and a sense of achievement

• Appeal of different game genres such as action RPGs, puzzles, casual and simulation games

• Role of game art and game aesthetics in increasing player motivation

• What are game mechanics? • Impact of game mechanics on the player experience

CHAPTER 2: CREATING FUN GAMEPLAY

Sub – topics:

• Difference between linear and non-linear games

• Controlling flow of non-linear, player-choice based games

• Controlling difficulty of gameplay through game balancing and teaching player through in-game tutorials

• Storytelling and the game narrative

• Creating quests and missions for establishing the end-goal of the game

CHAPTER 3: FREEDOM TO EXPLORE NEW WORLDS

Sub - topics:

• Implementing player progression by developing player’s skills and abilities and levelling up the player through achievements

• Movement mechanics: controlling the player through user input

• Mechanics for in-game travel with the help of maps and guides, transport vehicles, instant teleportation methods, and shortcuts in the game levels

• Game world and environment mechanics, including concepts such as creating infinite open worlds through procedural generation and realistic weather systems

CHAPTER 4: DEFEAT, COLLECT, REPEATSub - topics:

• Enemy and NPC generation using artificial intelligence and creating combat mechanics

• Establishing victory and defeat conditions

• Managing the player inventory, controlling the internal game economy, and resource management in games

• Implementing a reward system such as collection or trading of in-game currency, spawing natural resources in the game

• Unlocking new game levels and areas and greater player customization as the character levels up

CHAPTER 5: CHOOSE YOUR MECHANICS

Sub - topics:

• Tips for choosing game mechanics

• Designing game mechanics for different kinds of players such as achievers, skillers, and completionists

• Analysis of game mechanics in existing games of different genres:

o Sims (simulation)

o Fallout (role playing)

o Age of empires (base building)

o Life is strange (player-choice based)

o No man’s sky (procedurally generated survival)

• Prototyping, trial and error