Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11. Mobile Game Design
As we get to the end of our journey, it is time to channel all the info we have given
you so far into what the main goal of this topic is—to provide you, the readers, with
the knowledge it takes to approach the practice of game design for today's mobile
phones.
Game design can be daunting for a first timer but there is a methodology that breaks
this scary process into palatable pieces. Remember, the best way to eat an elephant
is one bite at a time!
We begin with a brief summary of the general game design process and then we will
delve into the details of mobile game design, with its good practices and lists of dos
and don'ts.
The last part of the chapter is dedicated to the theory of fun in games by Nicole Lazza-
ro, a popular researcher who studied how fun can help us designers to create better
and more compelling games.
In this chapter we will cover:
• The basic game design process
• The dos and don'ts of game design
• The distinctive aspects of mobile game design
• Hardware limitations
• Mobile design constraints
• The mobile market
The basic game design process
The game design process shares many stages with any type of software design;
identify what you want the game to do, define how it does it, find someone to program
it, then test/fix the hell out of it until it does what you expect it to do. Let's discuss
these stages in a bit more detail. Find an idea.
