Prototypes are key to creating new and unique games. If you want to be a leader, you must prototype.

When I did the doctor game, I wrote a huge design doc. Everything was detailed….except for the gameplay.

The document was really worthless because I didn’t know how the final game would look like.

With the upcoming experimental game…I prototyped and prototyped until I found something compelling. I focused on the core dynamics.

Here is why prototyping works. The creative mind likes to form creative patterns.

When you prototype, YOU CREATE KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING FOR YOUR MIND; you create unique knowledge that no one else in the world has experienced.

So as time progresses, your subconscious mind picks up on some of nuances in your prototypes…and ***bam***….your mind finally pieces together all of the knowledge gained from the prototypes…and comes up with a very useful and great idea.

So yeah, you must prototype. The hardest part for me to prototype was recognizing that I have to throw away a lot of the stuff I try. Initially, it felt like “wasting time” and “being inefficient”…but now I see each prototype as a point on a very curved/crazy path to beauty.

We all know that success is not a straight path….game development isn’t either.

Later,
Action

Anyway a clearer way of saying what I mean is – the typical indiegame ONLY has fun and playability to win it’s place in the demo players heart (ie no licence, hype, marketing spend or sequel followers)

I’ve read “build one to throw away” in software development and game development, but it was never heavily emphasized. It’s good to know that prototyping has met with such success in indie game development.

the way I have worked for a year and a half is to jot down ideas, expand the best ones into very small overview design docs (not full ones) then just get stuck in on the core game mechanic. I found some of them unworkable in practice or just not fun. Others I developed further until hitting a wall, and a couple more I carried on with feeling it was fun, do-able and marketable.

I then took the first of those and began iterative design/prototype of key elements within it (always having the main goal/idea to aim towards) and found I changed the core mechanic 3 times to include more fun and more interaction.

Once that was out the way It was then I took a look at the final prototype and played around with and wrote a (small) design doc and a schedule to go with it. Rather than sitting down at the start at writng a 25 page doc for something I didn’t know would work or not, I felt much better spending that time on something I knew would be ok (I had the proof in front of me – also had others check it out).

Then I just went for it. Some things changed along the way, ideas were scrapped or re-implemented. It feels like sculpting something from nothing.

Finally it now is coming up to beta status and I have to now work hard on doing all the things that are not open to question but just NEED to be put it (profiles, save games, polish etc). After that gameplay testing/balancing and hopefully release inside of the next 2 months.

So, getting back to the issue, proto typing has definitley worked for me. It may have set me back 6 months intially but I now have more insight into the process and other prototypes to go back and finish off.

For the kinds of games most indies put out – I think protos are far more important than a pre-production game design doc because fun and playability are prime concerns for smaller games unlike retail.

My plans for my next game involve making a simple prototype by March, but I will need to rethink it. I don’t think I’ll be making one prototype anymore, or at the very least I will be messing with the one I will have until I figure out what works.

Oracle’s Eye is still small enough that I can probably try different things as well. I haven’t put a lot of effort into levels or anything like that, so the game could change without too much pain.

Keith aka Uhfgood