Ask HN: Any recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?

I commented on your other thread - but you should really clean up your information diet. From the vocabulary you use and the tone of your game and pitch deck, I can tell you’re someone that hangs on the words of tech industry ‘thought leaders’. You need to realize that most of the people in tech who have time to podcast, write substacks, or otherwise build a ‘personal brand’, aren’t actually making shit. They’re trying to inflate their profile so they can trade reputation for career advancement in any number of ways. It’s also not worth listening to most VCs. Most of them don’t have the time or technical ability to understand the areas they’re investing in and just chase trends. If they had the time and technical abilities, they’d be building companies instead of getting other people to do it for them. You’d be surprised to hear how many investors or personalities that are supposedly high profile are openly derided among actual founders.

The way to make something that’s fun is to try to make something that’s fun over and over again until you’ve got it down. It’s not by obsessively reading what investors or people who are essentially glorified influencers say.

You need to make multiple games and think about what did and didn't work. Very few developers it was their first game. The early PC developers were pumping out multiple games a year.

While it won't help with real time games, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanism, will get you thinking about game mechanics.

If you want to make social games, then read The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html There's also 21 years of blog posts worth reading here http://habitatchronicles.com/category/general/

Also don't signup-gate web games, players need to be able to play them instantly, without an account.

I don't think books and tutorials help that much. Playing and making games — a lot of games — might help you grow more as a designer than reading and watching YouTube.

1. Do master studies. Take a tiny environment or mechanic of a game you love and reproduce it for education, knowing you'll throw it away. Do this often. Get faster at it.

2. Ask people what their favourite game is. Play it. If it's fun to you, why? If it doesn't resonate with you, why?

3. Internalise the idea that ideas don't matter that much, execution is what matters. Good game designers can make otherwise boring games feel fun to play. (See "the art of screenshake" below.)

4. Make a lot of games. Make them small enough to finish. You don't have to release them all, but you should watch other people play them sometimes.

5. Don't listen to people who tell you not to watch YouTube for game design ideas, there are plenty of great videos out there that have positively changed how I think about game design:

The art of screenshake (starts a little slow, but stick with it!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

Designing to reveal the nature of the universe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGSeLSmOALU

Game design is a search algorithm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5K0uqhxgsE

There's a lot of great advice in this thread. My take, after 30 years in the industry and stubbing my toe a lot:

1. Make as many small games as possible, but also mod as many games as possible and/or take existing games and tweak/twist them in a bunch of interesting ways. You'll explore some interesting design space without having to build everything from scratch.

2. Show your games off to friendly colleagues/other devs early and often. Earlier than you're ready for (because we're never quite ready!), and in person, if possible. Ask them what they'd do next, if they started with the game you just showed them. Most game devs at a physical community event want you to succeed, and are good at saying, "I'd do XYZ next." You don't have to listen to them, but if you do that enough, you'll get a good picture of how others see your work.

3. Whether you agree with them or not, be aware that GenAI is a sensitive topic for many game devs. Your Reddit post, if I'm seeing the right one, says "AI-powered browser game," which will be strongly divisive. I'd just focus on finding out what people like/dislike about gameplay, as that seems to be what you're looking for feedback on.

4. Design books are good, but I actually think they're an advanced maneuver. This is personal experience only, so take with a grain of salt, but I tend to kinda navel gaze and design-bible a project to death if I'm reading things too early in the process. So, if you've already digested Schell's book, I don't think you need to read a pile more yet.

5. Play as many games as possible, in the area of design you're interested in working. You'll see how people do stuff, you'll avoid making some obvious mistakes, and you'll get a bunch of ideas for stuff that devs aren't doing, that you could try.

Gamedev is tough but fun, and I wish you the best of luck!

My advice, which you might not see here, is to write about every game you play. And ideally every movie you watch and book you read, too. To develop a sense of your own taste and what makes a game good to you, you have to write your ideas down. Go through the major moments of a game and describe how they made you feel, and what they did to make you feel that way. Dissect the mechanics and identify stuff you liked and stuff that frustrated you.

This is pretty much what college is. You just write essays where you dissect stuff like that and then a professor reads them and gives feedback on your ideas and how you communicate them. You can do the same thing informally with your friends and partners, just discuss games.

Do game jams! They let you practice skills and helps you learn what sticks.

Big ones like Ludum Dare will also give you feedback on the game, which is good not for improving that gamejam game you made but for learning what things are important with a first impression. You often are meant to leave feedback on other games which is another good way to learn what works and potential pitfalls.

You're welcome to try hard on your first project but project ideas often have to be really really good to stick. Another advantage of doing gamejams is it let's you make something that you can easily just walk away from

The Art of Game Design is a very good jumping off point; it's how i got my start, and it gives you a lot of windows to look through.

A few years after getting that book, I started to work professionally with people building games, mostly white-labelled projects or contract work, which was the studio's bread and butter. But actually working with people developed my understanding of a) the relative value that artists, designers, and animators bring to the project, relative to my own set of skills and b) how to solve the sorts of problems that ship games. I am a programmer, and I use my programmer skills to give designers and artists what they ask for.

All of that to say: the best next step is working with folks, ideally some who have had experience. Book learning will only get you so far.

That being said, here are a few more books I have seen recommended in my sphere:

- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (this is not about games, but design generally)

- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse

- Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory (this is a technical book about modern game engines)

Finally, Liz England (a designer who lowkey helped me not lose hope when I was breaking into the industry) has/had a blog where she talks about game design books. I cannot personally vouch for the titles, but I trust Liz England [1]

[1] https://lizengland.com/blog/game-design-library/

Since no one mentioned it yet AFAICT I'll shout out CS50's Intro to Game Dev that uses Love2d (Lua framework): https://cs50.harvard.edu/games/2018/notes/0/

I also really like pico8 for initial dev with lots of rapid feedback. Lazy Devs Academy on YouTube has lots of good Pico8 tutorials, like this intro: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLea8cjCua_P3Sfq4XJqNV... Since pico8 source is often available you can look at it for inspiration, see for example Celeste: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145

Along the same lines suggest the Spelunky book from Derek Yu where he walks through his whole process (and all these Boss Fight Books are great for that) going from GameMaker Studio prototype to finished product: https://bossfightbooks.com/products/spelunky-by-derek-yu

Last but not least, Itch is doing a California Fire Relief Bundle right now https://itch.io/b/2863/california-fire-relief-bundle that includes good gamedev books from Chris DeLeon. See his "Why are you making your own games? " quiz, https://form.jotform.com/233546996151162/

edit: add link to DeLeon to explain

I've learned a lot of great general game dev info from Tynan Sylvester's book [0] (creator of Rimworld). Has good info on motivation, rewards, timing, goals, design philosophy, etc.

I have next to no game dev experience and the book is a great intro to a lot of foundational topics imo. NB: the book isn't very technical and is an easy read!

[0] Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences https://a.co/d/8Im68r8

I design board games and I think one of the most under utilized skills is studying other games. (There is old advice that says if you want to be a writer, then read more books.) Go back through all the games you like and write up what you love about them. Then, and more importantly, think a lot about HOW the game makes you feel that way or HOW the game gives you the opportunity to explore in some directed way. Then take that lens and re-evaluate the game that you made.

Every board/card game I design starts with a single key idea or mechanic or theme; but they all have a single cornerstone. Every playtest and design change is always looked at through that lens. If there isn't alignment, then you have two choices: ignore the change or considering resetting your cornerstone given what you know now. This really helps to stop thrashing and give focus to your game as you iterate.

Gamedev City [0] is a new community and could be a good place for feedback and finding resources in general. As for sharing demos and collecting feedback I personally think itch.io [1] is pretty good.

As far as game improvement is concerned it's important to get in a growth mindset and keep focusing on improving the game, which it sounds like you're already doing.

Finally if you haven't already I would recommend creating a discord or some kind of forum for you game (itch.io has free hosting for them) just so you can collect feedback from people who are interested and invested in it.

[0] https://gamedev.city/

[1] https://itch.io/

I’ve been a Game Engineer for 15+ years and there are many things that can help improve your toolkit. Experiment, learn new tech, and selectively copy. Experiment: make micro demos and test out features and gameplay you think of, try and find the fun. Learn new tech: new tech is popping up every day and it can give you more freedom to make what you want. Copy: if you see something in a game, movie, etc you think is cool, try and copy it and see if it fits what you’re trying to achieve.

I’d recommend YouTube channel Game Makers Toolkit to learn about game design and mechanics and Mix and Jam to learn about recreating existing features from games.

Most of all you need to make sure you pursue what you’re interested in and have fun.

I think the thing that applies here is the story about the potters making one perfect pot vs. 1000 imperfect ones. In the end the ones who were going for volume were the ones who were making the more beautiful ones too.

The best way to learn is just keep hammering. Keep your eyes open, whenever you find a game that you like or even just a demo or youtube video keep that around as a reference and then just copy it. Repeat it, think how it's done and then try to improve it or adapt it to make it your game.

Also remember, as an indie developer nobody will play your games. So keep that in mind and ask yourself what is your goal when making games. If you're trying to make it big and make a living and get yourself celeb status as an indie game dev it's not going to happen. Well I mean, every once in a while there's some dev who lucks out and has the perfect combination of stumbling on a good game idea and the right channels to actually make something out of it but that's not going to be you or me or anyone else really. (it's that one lucky guy out of a million).

Of course you might want to make gemos or demos just to sell yourself as a developer candidate to go work at some other studio.

Anyway, just keep iterating and copy without shame and keep making games.

PS. Actually you should be very encouraged by getting any feedback at all. That's already 10000x more than what most indie game devs ever get. Most common feedback is 0 feedback.

I think the most useful feedback would be that you should probably put some time into studying what a game actually is.

It might be that what you are trying to make actually isn't a game, but more of a sandbox, or a platform, or a space for people to hang out. That can work too, e.g. the website MaidMarian had a "game" that was just a bunch of people flying around talking to each other. There was nothing to do, but it was cool and it was fun (at least until the novelty wore off).

(There's also singleplayer sandboxes, but the multiplayer ones are ironically easier to make good, because in Jason Rohrer's words, a human being is an infinite novelty generator.)

Based on your post, that seems to be the case here! You seem to be making "spaces". So that can totally work. You might study previous examples of such games that are not really games but "spaces".

At any rate, it seems that at this point you're mostly just experimenting and trying things out. You are having trouble communicating the vision because there is no vision, or you're trying to find out what the vision is / discover what's cool / what works. That's fine too! You don't need to feel bad about that.

But when you present it as a game, there are certain expectations about what that means, e.g. it's expected that a game has a "point", and here there does not seem to be one.

I'm not sure if there's a better word for what you're making than a game, but that might be worth investigating if using different language here would be helpful for presenting the ideas.

The inimitable https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html, which is a great read for any programmer, not just game devs.

If you need some inspiration, check out levelsio's explorations knowing nothing about game dev and creating a multiplayer flight simulator with Cursor. He's been working on it over the past week and has made great progress. He has several tweets describing the process.

https://fly.pieter.com

https://x.com/levelsio

https://x.com/levelsio/status/1895540281488880095

Play lots of games! Especially ones you may not typically enjoy.

If your focus is programming, work with someone who is good at design. Don't expect to just be able to read some books and independently pull off interesting and innovative game design that will be commerically successful, unless you are very serious about diving deep and learning, to the same extent you would study art hard enough to call yourself a professional artist. Game design isn't some optional nice skill to have when making an independent game, it is literally all that matters. Coding is an important and useful skill, so find someone who feels confident about their design and implement their ideas together.

This blog is a gold mine. I have had this article (and others) in my bookmarks for 10years maybe:

https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/#map-storage

https://www.redblobgames.com

> But I’m clueless. don’t know design or mechanics

> Any books, videos, or communities that helped you grasp design or make fun mechanics?

Why do you want to make games? People who do generally have a lot of ideas they want to explore around design and mechanics.

That doesn’t mean all your ideas have to be good, or you start out good. But you’re asking the wrong questions.

Someone who is interested in game design should be able to make a fun game in PowerPoint,

I recommend the Godot documentation. The manual is not just a class reference, it's an entire book about best practices:

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/best_practi...

Also scroll up a little bit and do the Getting Started "Your First 2D Game" tutorial.

Join the discord(s) and learn by chatting with other game devs.

Godot game engine has been good to me, I have not made any original games but I have copied some games with a high skill ceiling, it is very important to have a high skill ceiling because otherwise it feels aimless, games like Advance Wars or Mega Man Battle Network have high skill ceilings but are not too difficult to create in 2D tile systems, as soon as you get into scaling the game with more units, more power ups, etc. then it starts to really feel like it has an aim to become stronger not just a cool thing to look at for 5 minutes

1. Never test a game in large public venues. You’re just asking to get annihilated. Find five experienced gamers that love to alpha test and provide high quality feedback. Iterate this process until all five are excited about the game. Then test with 20 more. Iterate again. When you have something 100 testers like/live, you’re ready for Reddit.

Learn to read code, deconstruct cool ideas in other games. Plenty of open source code to scour.

Mechanics are often systemic, so think like that. Instead of thinking about one off scenes, think how you can make foundational mechanics that you can build a story from.

Story: try making some story games in Twine or Inform just to learn how to engage the player through strict storytelling. This maps to your use of a base mechanics system.

You should love your own ideas more than anyone else, so only seek validation from yourself.

Resources which helped me get started:

"Challenges for Games Designers" by Brathwaite & Schreiber. This was by far the most helpful, as it laid out a process of finding & refining fun game ideas.

"Game Feel" by Swink. Examines why jumping feels better in Super Mario than Donkey Kong, why Street Fighter feels the way it does, etc. This way of breaking down & examining mechanics was eye opening and can be applied to other kinds of games.

lostgarden.com, especially https://lostgarden.com/2008/12/06/post-it-note-design-docs/, which describes a process for rapidly iterating on ideas, and https://lostgarden.com/2006/10/24/what-are-game-mechanics/, which introduced me to some of the fundamental building blocks of game mechanics.

Resources which helped me later:

I found "Art of Game Design" to be helpful later, when working on making a good game into a great game. The different lenses were great for finding areas where I could improve a game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg really drove home how important polish is. This was useful after I had a game which was already a bit fun.

Finally, an observation & a suggestion, if you're open to them: You admit that you don't know game design, yet you're attempting to innovate by removing limits. This seems like an enormous challenge for a beginner, like someone who doesn't know how to play an instrument attempting to make a new style of jazz.

I think you'd have more success if you learned to play the instrument first: Practice by making a lot of small games. Spend 2-4 days on each, no more. Learn to use prototypes to explore the design space, searching for ideas with a glimmer of fun. When you find one, iterate on it to see if you can refine it into something more fun. As your game design skills improve, your ability to innovate will improve too.

I'm not a game dev, but I watch Tim Cain's[1] YouTube channel, and I think it's a treasure trove of experience-based stories and advice.

https://www.youtube.com/@CainOnGames

[1]: Tim Cain created the original Fallout (pretty much designed the whole universe), and a number of other successful games after. He's an engineer through and through, but wore a lot of different hats, and has an interesting perspective on all aspects of game dev.

I really like what Pirate Software does. He runs Game Jams (https://itch.io/jam/pirate) which are a great way to build small things as a way to learn. There's also a very active Discord community: https://discord.com/invite/piratesoftware

Gamedev is sweatshop for a single person because it requires not only the programming but also art, game design, music and all should work together. The key thing here is keeping high resource and motivation. In gamedev the can evaporate easily and they can appear suddenly. Don't expect any feedback in early years. It takes time.

What I found helpful:

1. The book "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences" by Tynan Sylvester the creator of Rimworld.

2. Jonas Tyroller has some great videos on Game Design like this one: https://youtu.be/o5K0uqhxgsE

3. Some game marketing content from Chris Zukowski is also very helpful.

Two things:

1) DOOM was Romero's 100th game. As others said, make a lot of small games, iterate, learn.

2) "Game Thinking" by Amy Jo Kim helped me to focus my target audience and make decisions during development that benefit them.

I don't know anything about game dev, but just a bit of support on the feedback:

> feedback was tough: No clear goal, felt aimless. -

There are plenty of successful games that fit this description. There are plenty of unsuccessful ones as well. I would encourage you to lean in to the type of game you want to make. If the game is suppose to be an escape, does it bring that feeling? If the game is suppose to be fun, is it actually fun to play?

Most things just take time to learn. You probably won't get any worse at game design as time progresses, so you are doing the right things and the suggestions in this thread should help you on the path you are already on.

Here’s two:

Jordan Mechner’s 20 tips: https://www.jordanmechner.com/downloads/library/20tips.pdf

Liz England’s blog: https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/

I'm not a game dev, but I might suggest that for some supplementary learning, you could try to build and tweak the recently released source code for the Command and Conquer series. Could then learn how some things are made and try to replicate them conceptually in another language or platform.

I'm the developer of a boxing game called Leather, that I've had in the Play Store and App Store for about 6 or 7 years now.

As I'm working towards a Steam release I've been digesting a lot of this guy's advice - https://howtomarketagame.com/

Whilst much of his guidance is of course marketing rather than design related, he does write about genres and game mechanics that attract players - specifically on desktop rather than mobile. It's worth a few hours of your time to check his stuff out.

I looked at Space Zero and got a "sign up" link. I then closed my browser tab. Sorry, I won't register to find out what this is.

> Disquiet, a social network for software builders

Just as a side note, I love that name for a social media platform.

You should talk to people in person for feedback and have a conversation about it. Anonymous posts in messageboards are not an effective way to get feedback.

If you're planning to make games, understanding game design is a must—otherwise, it's easy to build something that just doesn’t feel fun. I'd highly recommend checking out Game Maker's Toolkit on YouTube. It breaks down game mechanics brilliantly and is a great resource for both beginners and experienced devs.

Amazing post. I'm also pointlessly building a gambling game called Space Plinko lol. Wanna team up ? Check it out! https://moonplinko.vercel.app/

I wouldn't hung up on the feedback too much. I also think minecraft has no clear goal and feels aimless and yet it's one of the most popular games in the world. If the game is fun for you, there will be a niche with the same taste for sure.

Masahiro Sakurai, creator/director of hit game series "Kirby" and "Super Smash Brothers", has an excellent YouTube series.

https://www.youtube.com/@sora_sakurai_en

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Mostly a link dump.

Mini Games for Ideas on game mechanics

- https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/

- https://abagames.github.io/action-mini-game-mechanic-tags/in...

Gameboy Development on restricted hardware (make something fun without a huge focus on graphics)

- https://gbdev.io/

- https://hh.gbdev.io/

Developers in the South Korea area if you're trying to find people to mentor / intern with.

- https://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php?country=South%20Korea&s...

Dwarf Fortress to make you feel like you accomplish nothing and other people are so productive its ridiculous (mild sarcasm, DF has lots of neat simulationist ideas, and "Toady" is ¯¯\_@©_/¯¯ organized. The dev map is crazy to look at. Like, it makes you feel vaguely insane.)

- https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

- https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

People trying to figure out what a "fun" game even means in terms of Live Action RolePlaying (mileage may vary on applicability to Space Zero and digital games)

- https://analoggamestudies.org/2014/10/o-jogo-do-bicho-pushin...

- https://petterkarlsson.se/2013/03/19/the-monitor-celestra-ba...

Games in terms actual militaries on Earth and the insights for modern day conflicts (that often get ignored by superiors)

- https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/how-does-the-next-great-po...

Technical stuff if you want "graphical resolution"

- https://learnopengl.com/Introduction

- https://www.learnopengles.com/android-lesson-one-getting-sta...

- https://webglfundamentals.org/

- https://webgl2fundamentals.org/

Shadertoy, gaze upon the abyss of shader development and 100,000 shaders (iq's stuff is absurd what's accomplished in a shader)

- https://www.shadertoy.com/results?sort=newest

- https://www.shadertoy.com/user/iq

Inigo Quilez - MATH ... who wrote Shadertoy

- https://iquilezles.org/articles/

Scryfall, 30,000 Magic the Gathering cards, and 30 years of game design mechanic development

- https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=%28game%3Ap...

SteamDB, to look at the 800 games that get release "every, single, week" and how few get "any" signups.

- https://steamdb.info/upcoming/?lastweek&sort=peak_desc

If low level find someone find apprentice under and or Find a job in the industry.

If on with higher level stuff (using an engine) use youtube.

I am doing the self teaching thing for low level with a web and CS background and it is brutal. I am currently on a one month break because one of the challenges I faced was too much.

There are discord channels I join to discuss, ask questions and learn.

I rely heavily on youtube but yeah sometimes it’s a lot. Gamdev is insane.

If you’re just using an engine just focus on shipping small games and start from there.

Even if it means copying a tutorial and changing one little bit.

I looked at your demo video, and website.

A game is like a story or movie, or any other creative work: foremost, you need a vision; and then a way of communicating it effectively to an audience.

The design, mechanics, and marketing are just functional details - essential, of course, but pointless without that overarching vision.

Your vision should be powerful, purposeful, and exciting (to you). It's more than just an 'idea'; there should be feelings associated with it (urgency, mystery, thrills, whatever) and a sense of a consistent inner 'story'. It fuels the passion that drives you to solve a series of problems that lead to game creation.

A relevant short essay: "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" by Ray Bradbury. (And probably the rest of the essays in his book, "Zen in the Art of Writing"...)

(Note: I have a game in the iOS App Store)

I just checked out your prior submission. The title didn’t really sell what the game is, it just lists some technical features you like. Then opening the link takes you to a page with a play button, and clicking it takes you an account creation window asking for my first and last name and email. At that point I backed out because there’s no way I’m signing up for something I don’t know and can’t try.

In the early days of Minecraft it was a free dev build that ran in the browser and had no accounts, as new take on a game called Infiniminer

Watching this guy's devlogs was extremely informative:

https://www.youtube.com/@randyprime

Handmade Hero.