Comment by oliwary
3 days ago
I really enjoyed the article, especially the focus on a gameplay loop, and leaving polish for later. Often I have found that I can tell if a game will be "fun" after a super low fidelity prototype. One of my games began as a jupyter notebook, for example. Of course, the rest of the process is also very important, but I am not sure a game that is not fun from the start can be made into a good game.
In the same vein, I can recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34376766-blood-sweat-and...
It shows that even big companies and development efforts can often struggle to create a fun game, even when the people involved have a lot of experience. It is a hard thing to accomplish!
Agree. I used to fast-prototype games — and if they were kind of fun in even their rough stage, I might be on to something.
To be sure, there were a lot more game prototypes that got swept into the bin. Often for the same reasons the author mentioned (specifically there were several I knew were going to be too much of a time investment to do properly).
EDIT: I have already posted the first two volumes (disk image) of unfinished games. I can easily create a third volume. Here is volume 1:
https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-UnfinishedTa...