10 Game Design Tips for Newbies [Guide] – Think Big, Start Small

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Gaming – one of the finest experience one may have in entertainment and booming all over the world but to be a gamer, to be a game designer, we all need proper guidance, pros and cons, how to proceed and so on.

Think Big, Start Small is one of the tip in overall game design tips and it’s just to tell you that if you can take small actions to achieve your goals (big thinking), one day your small action becomes huge and you achieve your desired results.

and here, Game design for beginners is similar to the first flight to the moon for astronauts. There are still many unknowns ahead.

This is going to be a helpful guide for all the newbies and to share with all budding game designers trying to figure out what the hell everyone is talking about and why they are so excited about a particular design.

Design Basics to Keep in Mind + 5 Key Game Making Tips

  • Games are a source of entertainment. Thus, the ability to create something that people find entertaining can lead some designers to success. So, you have to make your game fun. How? Let’s see!

Tip 1. Study the Target Audience and Meet Players’ Expectations – Look out for the deciding Factor!

Your task is not to please everyone by your ideas, but you should find your audience and study its tastes and preferences.

When it comes to designers working in an established video game design company, they usually get market research to know where to start.

It’s pretty easy to create a game that belongs to an established genre. If you are planning a completely unique type of project, it is best to talk to potential players to get their opinion and connect them with the idea you want to implement.

Players’ expectations from your product are perhaps the deciding factor in whether it succeeds or fails. If you meet the players’ expectations or even exceed them (in a positive way, of course), your game will be a hit.

  • Design is not about developing games; it’s about making strategic decisions. The game design team is a critical component of the game development process, but they do not participate in the entire process. These specialists apply design and aesthetics at the initial stages of development to put everything they create – levels, rules, and challenges, mechanics, graphics in the hands of developers.

Tip 2. Focus on the Gameplay with Players in Mind

Is the gameplay designed for running and collecting coins or defeating enemies? When you create a game, you need to define what your gameplay is and make it as fun as possible for your audience. Among standard challenges like time, endurance, resource control, choose the one that is most preferable for the end-users and adapt it to the latest trends. Today it will be very beneficial to unite players to solve a single challenge by communicating with each other during this prolonged lockdown. Challenges can be combined in almost any configuration you think of. In fact, designers are hired to create immersive virtual reality environments with challenging levels.

  • Any game design starts with a highly descriptive overview. Designers formulate a special document with all the characteristics at the beginning to know what to achieve during the whole process.

Tip 3. Don’t Neglect a Game Design Document (GDD)

This is an initial document with all the details the team needs to work on. Besides the feature list, overview, and project requirements, it is recommended to include schedules for each stage of design, and budget estimates if you’re dealing with additional resources. You need a GDD (this is a common abbreviation you can face in the industry) to estimate the scope of work and pursue the key goal – to create a product of high quality.

  • All design elements conform to specific requirements. What does it mean? When defining the general context of a future game, you must adhere to a specific style, theme, storyline, and other details.

Tip 4. Maintain the Integrity of Your Game Design throughout the Whole Process

You, as a designer, cannot go beyond style, theme, and other specifications. Games can be unique depending on the type of challenge or the rules the player is facing. But it’s best not to deviate from a high concept (the main idea) – all the following levels, plot twists, characters, environments, and other assets. Do not stray too far from the style, genre roots, and type of gameplay. If you are making a jungle puzzle, the challenges should fit the jungle theme. If you are working on co-op gameplay, increase the difficulty to compensate for the presence of additional players, and so on. Each inconsistency can be confusing for players, preventing them from fully immersing themselves in your game.

  • The most important part of any game is the first 10 minutes. There are many games to choose from so your product must stand out from the rest from the start. Designers open up access to another world based on their creative vision. This applies to everything that surrounds the player – characters, environment, levels, interfaces, and so forth.

Tip 5. Strengthen the First Impression of the Game with Great Visuals

These are marketers and sales representatives who focus on promoting products to end-users, while designers create the first impression of the product. Whatever makes players buy or download your game, help them complete all the levels with good experiences. Well-designed characters and environments that appear at the beginning will only work to your advantage. Make the player think the rest of the game will be just as impressive.

When in doubt about visuals – what to create or how to create graphic designs, it’s best to find someone who is competent in the field. For example, the guys from Kevuru Games are professionals in the design and development of game art. Thus, you can contact them for more information about the services that you can order for your project if needed.

Visualization play an important role and here, you might compare minecraft with roblox in terms of designing and both are good at their ends and giving different exposure to their players.

Extra 5 Game Dev Tips

The overall design process may vary from designer to designer, from company to company, and from project to project. So, the workload may differ as well. ut the game design tips remain the same. Here are 5 more video game tips added to the previous list:

  1. Discover the gamedev world, inside and out. Read materials, follow updates, attend online courses. In general, stay tuned with the latest news, trends and techniques.
  2. Think big, start small. You should have a concrete idea to implement. But don’t plunge headlong into the process of creating something big. It is easy to get lost in the work and in the end not realize anything.
  3. Create, test and improve. Don’t rely on luck! Instead, try to improve your product after thorough testing.
  4. Select the most effective design tools and methods. Today, you aren’t limited to Photoshop. There are many tools you can make the best use of.
  5. Practice, practice and practice! Like any other skill, the game design requires effort to acquire competency.

Tools to Create Your First 3D Model from Scratch

If you have any question regarding game design, if you want review of any specific game designing tools or even if you want to know popular tools around game designing, feel free to ask in comment section along with your email id so that we will respond your back with your desire topic. cheers 🙂