Overview

In this course, you will be introduced to game development and prototyping for games. Courses 1-4 are highly recommended while Courses 5-7 create the foundational Unreal Engine project, assets and code used throughout this course. This course requires no previous experience and aimed at beginners. This course explores 6 different game modes: Stealth Survival, Platformer, Capture the Flag, Action Combat, Crafting, and Story. This course will include a pre-production phase where learners will break down the design of each mode using Obsidian. Understanding the core gameplay experience each mode is intended to design. This pre-production phase will not only outline gameplay features but also how you can reuse assets and code for quick prototyping. After pre-production, there is a module dedicated to creating each game mode. This will include game mode-specific code, design and iteration. By the end of this course you will package your project to be in a visually presentable format for your portfolio.

Syllabus

Pre-Production

This module is all about planning. Before a game begins, there are numerous decisions that you need to think about. It is important to seek out games that are similar in design, look for success and failure stories from developer interviews. Our industry loves to share knowledge through convention talks, dev logs on YouTube and through communities like Discord. During pre-production it is important to identify your early goals for development and work in phases. Don't try to FULLY build specific features, always focus on the core game loop. It is important to keep it in specific design targets where you can take a moment and play what you are making. From there you can adjust, iterate and further understand your project progression.

Implementation

In this module we will implement all the game mechanics we need to start prototyping each game mode. We will create specific features that we can enable or disable for our game design needs. This module is built to give you a broad understanding on how to implement mechanics and systems in the future.

Game Modes

In this module it is time to put everything you've learned to the test. Everything from Course 1 all the way through to Course 8. You will be tasked to design one of each game mode: Stealth Survival, Platformer, Capture the Flag, Action Combat, Crafting and Story. Understanding game design for multiple genres is part of creating innovative new ideas. When two seemingly opposite genres get combined together, it sparks something new. Try to take a loose approach at what you create, think about the ambience for your level. Decide what game mechanics do you choose to keep, or improve, for each game mode.

Course Reflection

Your final project for Course 8 is to design a small game experience with complete creative freedom. Try to keep it simple, think about one, two or three core gameplay mechanics to focus on. Your designs should focus on supporting those features. Perhaps one of your previous game modes sparked your interest, and you can take it to the next level by expanding it further. You can try combining different game genres that you rarely see used together. Maybe there is a game type that wasn't discussed in this course that you are really interested in prototyping. Use Obsidian to plan your designs and scope accordingly. Look for references and complete research on similar genres. Your limits are only bound to your imagination!