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What are some good introductory books on video game theory and design?
I'm looking into making a 2D video game just for fun, and I'd like to know some books on the subject. Not necessarily technical, since I got that covered with Godot Engine materials, but brainstorming, planning, narrative, theory, etc... You know, some big-picture stuff!
For convenience and personal preference, I much prefer books instead of videos and articles.
All I've read on the subject are:
They aren't about 2D games, but the books are fun to read and give you a lot of interesting information on optimization and old hardware. There's a lot of wisdom in there from John Carmack.
Love Doom, love Wolf 3D. That's great! It doesn't matter that the games in question are not 2D. Like I said, it doesn't need to have a direct technical application for what I'm going to do. Thanks!
You can have my copies if you pay for shipping.
Thanks! I appreciate the offer, but since I'm in South America and most Tilders are in Europe or in the US, the shipping will probably be prohibitive.
But if you're in Brazil by any change, I'd love to have it ;)
Oof, yeah I'm in California. USPS says it'd be $72.
Yeah... for this kind of stuff, down here we have to find other means...
I can also recommend b-ok.cc, great site. Also offers greater access over the onion network if you catch me' drift.
It's been ages since I've read up on game design, but I've heard a lot of good things about The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, and I know it's used as a textbook in a number of GD programs.
Also while searching for the correct title, I found that the first result on google is a complete PDF of the book (though I can't guarantee it's a legally-free copy). Alternatively, Amazon has it for ~50 USD.
As a founding member of my country's Pirate Party, I have no problem with that ;)
I'd like to recommend those two:
Unfortunately, there isn't that much. I believe that a lot of iconic gamedesigners didn't really know what they were doing when building some absolute classics and it's more a question of mastering the technical difficulties and then mustering the willpower to fo fail your way towards something good through polish and iteration.
The only designer who I think has a clue about a greater "theory of gamedesign" is Jonathan Blow. There's a few dozen talks and interviews with him but they only exist as youtube videos, I wished he'd sat down and write a book already. Here's a huge list and honestly, any of those videos are a great start, but this one with Marc Ten Bosch is one of my favorites. I know this is exactly what you wanted to avoid (videos vs books) but I honestly think these talks are the best "big picture" material on game design out there!
I love Braid and was playing Witness just last night. I'm never able to finish his games, though. Will watch the videos. Thanks!
He makes puzzle games (which are very hard because how "pure" he likes them) but I think his views on design are rather universal! For example, in this video he just plays games he likes and talks about why he likes them, including a very non-puzzle platformer called 1001 Spikes, which he claims has one of the best levels ever made. He's also really into PUBG, used to play CS competitively and on his old prototypes page you'll find a brilliant concept for a painting-game and a music/rhythm game.
I always try and not come off as too pushy since I'm such a fanboy. I always fail.
NP, Jonathan Blow is okay! I'm just bad at puzzles. If he was a filmmaker he would be Bergman or Richard Linklater. But cerebral movies are not that hard to finish, you just gotta sit there :P
Portal 2 is the only puzzle game I ever finished and it's also my favorite game of all time because it's puzzles are extremely fair...
I'm not a fan of puzzles that require too much memory or intuition, those are not my strong suit. And when you break them down, a lot of puzzles require these skills.