Challenges for game designers
by Brenda Brathwaite · first published 2009
5mentions
5recommended by
5HN commenters
2011–2025first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Short design exercises that illustrate concrete concepts such as balancing and mechanical loops, with a comprehensive process focus; suited to anyone learning to make games and to those who want hands-on practice.
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Brenda Brathwaite is the responsible for the Wizardry videogame series, if you're old enough to have played them. She also has done extensive work in teaching game design, you might like Challenges for Game Designers, which she co-authored with Ian Schreiber. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Brathwaite
on “Game Design Insights: John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite” ↗…don't know how to make a game, where does the knowledge come from? If you're at the stage where you feel like you don't know how to make a game, you might find value in doing the exercises from the book "Challenges for Game Designers" by Brathwaite & Schreiber.
on “The Level Design Book” ↗The three books I've read and then gone back to over the years are: - Brenda Romero (credited on the book as Brenda Braithwaite) and Ian Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers[1], which uses a series of design exercises to illustrate concepts like balancing and mechanical loops, and at least from a cursory glance at the Riot curriculum is very similar in structure to it. The…
on “Game Design Curriculum” ↗I'd add: - Rules of Play http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/rules-play - Challenges for Game Designers http://books.google.com/books/about/Challenges_for_Game_Desi... - The Art of Game Design http://artofgamedesign.com/
on “Books For Game Developers” ↗…struggling with making art. It specifically focuses on vector art, and pixel art might be more suitable, for that https://lospec.com/ links to many tutorials. For game design process Game Design Workshop and Challenges for Game Designers are good books that cover process comprehensively (TLDR is quick concept, prototype, play test, refine).
on “Are we game yet? – A guide to the Rust game development ecosystem” ↗