Review of 'Challenges for Game Designers' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Most creative professionals understand that constraints foster creativity, and this is the approach Challenges for Game Designers uses to encourage designers toward brilliant games, since most people, given a problem, will naturally tap into creative insights to find a solution. Designed for beginner to intermediate designers, each chapter focuses on certain aspects of game design: genre, manipulating mechanics, drawing from personal experiences, and so on to explore design problems and help the reader understand how designers think. The challenges are interesting and themselves creative.
The chapters are structured such that they provide a short introduction--usually only a few pages--to basic game design ideals. Each chapter then provides 5 design challenges, complete with concept, goal, and expected deliverables. Additional challenge ideas are available on the last page of the chapter. Though not as fleshed-out (which comes with pros and cons), these are also great motivators for designers to think of solutions …
Most creative professionals understand that constraints foster creativity, and this is the approach Challenges for Game Designers uses to encourage designers toward brilliant games, since most people, given a problem, will naturally tap into creative insights to find a solution. Designed for beginner to intermediate designers, each chapter focuses on certain aspects of game design: genre, manipulating mechanics, drawing from personal experiences, and so on to explore design problems and help the reader understand how designers think. The challenges are interesting and themselves creative.
The chapters are structured such that they provide a short introduction--usually only a few pages--to basic game design ideals. Each chapter then provides 5 design challenges, complete with concept, goal, and expected deliverables. Additional challenge ideas are available on the last page of the chapter. Though not as fleshed-out (which comes with pros and cons), these are also great motivators for designers to think of solutions to interesting problems.
Mostly, the challenges serve as the boundaries and starting point; designers have enough of an outline to avoid the anxieties that come with a blank page, while still having enough open-endedness to allow for innovative design.