How I start a game

I've been making flash games for a couple years now, and in that time the way I attack the process of creating a game has evolved quite a bit. Here's the basic process I follow now:

1. Idea - The inspiration for a game can come from anywhere. Sometimes I get inspired by another game, or a movie or book. Inspiration can also come from real life - I got the original idea for Avalancher while trying to navigate my hilly back yard after a winter storm left the ground covered in ice. I've found that it's best to let the ideas come to me on their own, rather than trying to sit down and conceive the perfect game. While I try to only work on one game at a time, I've usually got 5-10 other ideas floating around in my head.



2. Mechanics - Once I've settled on an idea for a game, I try to pin down the details of the core game mechanics (i.e., what is the player going to spend most of their time doing?). There are exceptions, but usually having just one core game mechanic produces a better result than multiple mechanics. Sketching out some screens on paper at this stage is a great way to clarify my core vision for the game.



3. Prototype - At this point I'll usually develop a quick prototype (something I can put together in a day or so) to figure out if the idea is worth pursuing or not. The main things that kill off ideas are: not fun, too big of a project, too complicated for players to learn, beyond my abilities as a programmer, or would require art that is beyond my ability as an artist. About 75% of my ideas get killed off at this point.

4. Architecture - This step wasn't really necessary with my earlier games when level data could be stored in a simple array of integers, but my newer games are more complicated, and usually require a level editor of some kind to build out the game. I like to start working on the level editor at this point of the process, rather than the game itself, because it forces me to think about how I'm going to store the level information and translate it into actual gameplay. It also helps me get the boring stuff out of the way at the beginning of the project while my enthusiasm is still high, so that I can focus on fun stuff like adding new features later on. For games that don't have a traditional level structure I'll work on refactoring the code for the prototype into a more organized format.

So that's how I get started on a game. I'll probably talk about the rest of the process of making a game at some point in the future, but I think this is enough for right now :)