Designing: The Game and Its Content

A ranching game is a pet game where the player owns property and infrastructure which are used to produce pets. It is a close relative to farming games where the player owns property and infrastructure to produce crops; the well-known game series Harvest Moon combines these two types of games.By my estimate, ranching games are the second most popular type...

These are three older entries copied (with a bit of editing) from my equivalent of this developer journal over on the Virtual Pet List forum.  I'm copying them here because I wanted to follow up with the new one I just wrote, and they probably should have been copied here in the first place because they're about game design.  I make no guarantee that they...

X. Finale: An overview of the game development process and how the design document is used during this process. 1. Revise –  Theoretically you now have the first two parts of a game design document: a statement of purpose and a features list. Look them over for any inconsistencies or missing information and fix that if you can, or mark it (I use bright re...

14. GUIs and Controls, Game Modes and Context-Sensitive Behavior GUI stands for graphical user interface . Borders, icons, menu bars, mouse cursors, font(s), the title screen, the credit screen(s), the help/about screen(s), trading and shop interfaces, pop-up menus, tool tips, any backgrounds which are solid colors or gradients rather than artwork, etc. a...

13. Minigames, Puzzles, And Other Combat Alternatives While combat is the main activity of many games, other games do not have combat at all, or alternate combat with some other major activity. Changing-up the player's experience by alternating two major activities is done with the goal that the player doesn't get bored as fast. The entertainment value of...