Game DEV Ideas for beginners

Warm Up

Hello everyone out there! Its Dev here. Today we are going to talk about how to come up with great ideas on which you can make your game. So, truly speaking one of the most difficult thing in game dev(According to me) is coming up with good game ideas BUT this in turn makes it the most interesting and playful part of game development. Designers really think HARD before coming up with good game ideas. So they really need appreciation ( Thank you game designers ). The thing that really matters is that how a beginner can come up with great ideas especially if he/she is an indie game developer and can't afford a game designer. Well there is no direct way of having great game ideas. As designers used to say "you really need to be at least 88 years old in order to think like a pro game designer". but don't take these words seriously(as they are totally created by me ) they literally mean you need to have experience before you come up with ideas. 

Again this is not the only way around here. The difference between the ideas of Pro Game designer and those of Noobs(which is shorthand for beginners) is that Ideas of Pro game designer have nearly 90% chance of being a great hit in the market. Whereas the ideas of noobs have hit percentage of nearly 5%(again these are totally made up statistics but try to get the meaning of these lines). Of course any beginner may come up with a great game ideas but doesn't violate the laws of probability.

Let's Dev

 So much talking (this talk is very necessary because it build the fundamentals of game design). Ideas REALLY depend on keywords. Every game idea can successfully be embedded into a single word. So make a list of many words that are related to game development like genres, characteristics of the player, type of enemies, type of world in which game should take place etc. When you have your list ready, start matching different words together to make some phrases. These phrases need not to be amazing but there will be some phrases on which you can make stories. Try to collect some of these phrases and make stories out of them. Consider one example Cloud-Spider-Coffee. This phrase can be compiled into a platformer game which takes place in the sky, where deadly spiders rule. These spider make the rain drops poisoned which is causing havoc on the earth. Your aim is to reach the cloud and fight the spiders. The strange thing here is that spider (on that world) hate coffee as it kills them. Here a challenging part comes in that coffee that you get on cloud can be either used to kill spiders or to regain lost health. Player have to think hard before using the coffee.

This process of coming up with game ideas is great for those who are starting their way in game development because it teaches them how to mix various small ideas to make great game design ideas that can be the next market hit. The main thing is that you should keep exploiting this process and gain experience. After having experience, no one can stop you to release a HIT :).

I also recommend reading 'Level Up by Scott Rogers' which is a great book for those who want a detailed guide to learn game design.

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