How can you balance game mechanics and work with programmers?

Avoid overwhelming your game with complicated mechanics at the beginning. Concentrate on a handful of core mechanics that complement each other and gradually expand from there. Aim for a harmonious blend of challenge and reward, difficulty and accessibility, and innovation and familiarity.

Create communication protocols that outline response times, meeting agendas, and documentation formats. Be open to feedback, concerns, and technical limitations from the programmers. Understand their perspective and collaborate to find solutions. Keep the programmers informed about any changes in design decisions, gameplay elements, or priorities. This ensures that everyone is aligned with the current direction. Maintain clear documentation of design choices, mechanics specifications, and the reasoning behind changes. This serves as a reference point and helps prevent misinterpretations. Share the team's successes and milestones, recognizing the programmers' contributions to the mechanics and balanced gameplay.

To see if the design works, build a prototype with it. Doesn't have to be pretty, it just needs to work as well as you need it to. From there, you and your team can then see if the mechanic even makes sense in the game, how can it be implemented in the overall level design (if needed), or should it just be scrapped altogether.

By identifying and addressing issues early on, prototyping and playtesting help prevent costly changes later in the development process.

Constraints are indeed a crucial factor in game development, as they can affect the feasibility, quality, and scope of your game. By respecting the constraints, you can avoid wasting time and resources on unrealistic or unfeasible game mechanics. You can also create more innovative and creative solutions within the boundaries of the constraints.

It's always great to be innovative, but you need to stand back and see how feasible the mechanic, system, or feature actually is. I've seen designers come out with the craziest stuff, like out of this world stuff. But then the programmer is the one that has to figure out how to actually code/implement it. Can the current engine do it? Will they need to develop a new tool? Do they even have time to build the tool? This is where your communication skills come in, you can ask questions like, "Is there a compromise?" or "What systems do we actually need?" This is no one's fault, this is just part of working in a team.

See limitations as an opportunity to discover new solutions and create distinctive mechanics that wouldn't be achievable otherwise. Give priority to what truly enhances the gameplay and devise mechanics that establish a solid foundation within the given constraints.

Never hurts to learn skills outside of design, in fact, it can make you a better designer and team player! You can make better design choices, prototype the ideas on your own, consider the technical constraints for your ideas, and the programmers will love you for it.

Don’t get frustrated with the QA process. It’s fairly common to grow frustrated over a design not matching the final spec due to how enjoyable something feels on paper vs in an actual, functional prototype or demo. I’ve designed things I thought were the most unique on the planet… tested them out… and fizzled lol.

- In your design document, be clear with your game rules and avoid vague words or phrases. This will help the programmer to understand better your design. - If you are not a coder, learn at least Algorithms. It will help you to breakdown your game mechanics into conditions for common language with the programmer.