Full Indie 2016 : Let’s get physical – lessons from the real world

Zach Gage shared with us some things he has learnt from making physical games to re-use in video games. I’ve collected some of the rich thoughts from his talk on card, dice and billiard.

I found his comments on handling randomness and adapting incentives to player skill particularly interesting. On top of gameplay ideas, I like the idea of making board games to experiment with video game mechanics as a cost-effective way to learn from a concept before writing a single line of code.

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Where there is a will, there is a way : playtesting during the pre-production phase

A while ago, I was talking with one of the students in game user research from ENJMIN. He was eagerly waiting to have the first game prototype to start testing and had a lot of ideas. He was at a loss however as to what to do meanwhile.

In my experience, not having a game prototype is a non issue : that’s when everything can still be changed, it’s the perfect time for testing! Many solutions exist to be able to test concepts and gameplay mecanics even without a prototype. With little help from the developers, game designers it is possible to design a test and anticipate some or most of the major usability issues before having a game to playtest. This article proposes an overview of solutions to still be able to conduct tests early in the development process.

Continue reading Where there is a will, there is a way : playtesting during the pre-production phase