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  • Pini!

How do I start?


Theme first, mechanisms first or the new trend in town - experience first.

Let me tell you something, non of this gives me any idea of what to do when it comes down to it. I can listen to the designers that are considered the best in our days talk and the a lot of the conversation is around how to design process and not on how to start the design process. I've never met anyone who did not fear the blank page at some point. So it doesn't matter what type of designer you are, here are 4 quick tips on how to start.

 

1. Just write something. Take that stupid paper and write something. any-thing. Really, it works. You know you want to make a game about planting flowers in buckets, start by naming flowers you know. Draw a bucket with flowers. You want cards? draw a rectangle and start filling it with what you think the cards should have in them, all of these things might be gone when you are done designing, but you should do it anyhow.

2. Don't be intimidated, most of everyone's ideas suck. It takes 10 bad ideas to get 1 good idea for most people. Don't think famous and successful designers have only good ideas, they have many bad ones they learn how to throw away with experience. Talking about throwing away...

3. Don't be afraid to tuck away any idea that doesn't seem good. Mostly you should keep some "paper work" you can maybe use later, but you have to throw things away in order not to waste time (speaking as not a full time designer/developer) on dead end ideas. It's also good to clear your head before starting something new.

4. Challenge yourself all the time. Some people use challenges offered by different sites, companies and different design competitions. I'm much less into that, I just challenge myself by creating my own. I had a friend that said he hates deck builders, so I told him I will make one he likes. That was a great challenge that gave birth to my upcoming game Edge of Humanity. Why was it good? Because it had a defined goal and a defined base, it should be a deck builder but significantly different than anything else. It made me come up with the dynamic deck concept (more on that another time).

Now go design,

Pini!

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