How to turn story idea into a game

General Discussion
1

Hi

I am looking on the web for resources and tips that will guide me with how to turn a story idea into a playable game. I know this is a pretty huge topic.

If anyone here knows of a good video/blog post/book/… or has experience on this I will appreciate it if you can share it. :slightly_smiling_face:

Kind Regards

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2

I am not an expert on this topic but I would suggest following steps:

  1. The story must be available. I am not sure whether you have a story already.
  2. Choose the type of game (jump and run, adventure, point and click, action, simulation)
  3. Make a graphic storyboard with pen and paper and put it on your wall. This will give you an idea of how scenes and assets should look like. Try to imagine the ambient sound in each scene as well. I guess this will take a long time but it will shape the entire game.
  4. Make a development timeline, define the milestones, and don’t forget the assets.
  5. If you are very sure that your game will become a success, try to crowdfund the project. Make some (limited) merchandising articles which you can send to your backers.
  6. Start coding and have fun.
  7. Try to connect with your community on a separate web site with a forum. This helps to keep people informed about the process and keeps you working on the project itself.

I hope this helps somehow. Maybe somebody else can give additional ideas?

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I’m not an expert also… but I want to give you advice based on my experience and specially my personal mistakes.

I agree with most of what @Apollo said but I’d add a 4b section: stick to the plan. I mean, don’t define new functionality, gameplay rules, etc in the middle of the development, you may end up re-writing most of the code done. It’s better to use extra time in defining everything beforehand

If using any external API like google’s, facebook’s, steam, whichever… try adding them in the end or at least the later you can, otherwise you’ll have to update your code matching external API changes from time to time and they change the APIs quite often, specially facebook.

If you’re a one-person team, go for a simple project or it’ll take ages for you to finish it (I’ve still not finished a game I started it like 10 years ago).

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