Our 10 Favorite Game Design Articles
Game design is a unique combination of storytelling, engineering and art. Mastering game design can take a lifetime, so we wanted to jumpstart your education by putting together a guide of the 10 best game design articles we could find. Whether you are an industry expert or a complete beginner, all of these articles condense valuable lessons into a few short pages each. Check them out
Design A Game: The Full Tutorial
This eight-part forum post walks you through the basics of game design and distribution.
Level Design Lessons from Super Mario Bros 3
Significant Bits, a blog by video game designer Radek Koncewicz, goes into detail about how SMB3′s game design made it so easy to pick up and play.
Beginning Level Design, Part 1
This is a classic Gamasutra article from the way back machine: April 16th, 1999. This 5-page article gives you a great overview of level design for the advanced beginner.
Roger Dickey’s Hacks for Game Monetization
We couldn’t help but include this awesome video that was taken from Roger Dickey’s presentation at our Game Monetization meetup. His 35 minute video is a gold mine of awesome monetization ideas and applications for virtual-currency based games.
An indie game developer reveals his engineering-based approach to game design and how it helped him build a successful game.
What made those old 2D platformers so great
Another post by SignificantBits, this time about the design that went into the simple joy of our favorite 2D platform games like Donkey Kong Country. It’s even more relevant today as mobile games often return to this 2D platformer model.
Practical Game Design: The Rule of Threes
This article shows how to teach players new game mechanics by using three different ways of showing a new challenge.
An atomic theory of fun game design
In a 2004 essay that later became a GDC talk, Raph Koster outlines his “atomic theory of game design”. This one is a good read and well worth the time it takes to read it.
Game Design Insights from John Romero & Brenda Brathwaithe
Two legends of the game industry, John Romero and Brenda Brathwaithe, gave a talk at game industry college Cogswell Polytechnical College packs with great insights.
Bonus: If Mario Was Designed In 2010
Hey, not all of these posts have to be serious! In one of the most viral posts among the game industry in 2010, Zack Hiwiller mocked modern social games by showing what Mario would look like if it included their hooks and viral loops. This one is always worth a good laugh, and it should give you some hints on what not to do. Enjoy!