What's your game design prototyping and playtesting workflow?

1 Choose your prototyping tools

The first step is to decide what tools you'll use to create your prototype. Depending on your game genre, scope, and platform, you might use a game engine, a programming language, a board game, a card game, or even paper and pencil. The key is to choose a tool that allows you to quickly and easily iterate on your core mechanics, without worrying too much about graphics, sound, or polish. You want to focus on the gameplay, not the presentation.

2 Define your prototyping goals

The next step is to define what you want to achieve with your prototype. What are the main features, mechanics, or systems that you want to test? What are the questions that you want to answer? What are the assumptions that you want to validate? Having clear and specific goals will help you design your prototype, prioritize your tasks, and measure your progress. You don't need to prototype everything at once; you can start with the most important or risky elements, and then add more as you go.

3 Build and iterate on your prototype

The third step is to actually build and iterate on your prototype. This is where you put your ideas into action, and see how they work in practice. You'll probably encounter some challenges, bugs, or surprises along the way, but that's part of the learning process. Don't be afraid to experiment, tweak, or discard things that don't work. The goal is to find the fun and the fundamental loop of your game, and refine it until it feels satisfying and engaging.

4 Plan and conduct your playtests

The fourth step is to plan and conduct your playtests. Playtesting is a key way to evaluate your design, detect problems, and spot potential improvements. To achieve successful playtests, you need to define your target audience and recruit the appropriate number of playtesters. Additionally, you should prepare the playtest session by setting objectives, questions and metrics for data collection. During the session, you should manage technical issues, questions and feedback from your playtesters. Finally, review the results of the playtest and decide which changes need to be made to your prototype.

5 Repeat and refine your process

The final step is to repeat and refine your prototyping and playtesting process. Prototyping and playtesting are not one-time events, but ongoing cycles of iteration and evaluation. You'll need to build, test, and improve your prototype multiple times, until you reach a level of quality and polish that meets your standards and goals. You'll also need to adapt your process to your changing needs and challenges, and learn from your successes and failures. Prototyping and playtesting are not easy, but they are rewarding and fun, and they will help you create better games.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?