What are the most important elements to include in a game prototype?

There are 2 kinds of prototypes and you should NOT mix them. Many studios make this mistake. Type 1 - Testing a Hypothesis. This prototype is designed to answer key, blocking questions for the team, to test crucial assumptions. You make it as quick and cheap as possible. It might even involve modding another game. Get the data fast and move on. Type 2 - Showing off your Conclusions. Building confidence in the team's answers with external stakeholders. This prototype is all about presentation value to people outside the design or engineering team. It has the OPPOSITE goals from Type 1. Do not use the same prototype for both. You get the worst of every possible world.

A refined Control scheme and the 2-3 things the player will do most often in the game. Concentrate on control and core experience.

If you’re really building a prototype you’re building something fast, small, and specific. You should be testing a hypothesis. In most cases it’s: the core mechanic is fun. Is it fun to shoot? Is it fun to match? If it fun to build? Beyond that you are out of prototype land.

Fundamentally there are 2 ways to approach this! A top down approach, a bottom up approach. Low Risk A top down approach is building your prototype is an insight that you have built from your assumptions / hypothesis of an existing game that you have felt is a game changer. Your prototype should have all the elements that need to be tested with the focus group. Simplest question is how strong is your insight that the game can flourish on those elements. High Risk The bottom up approach is more on an approach that the team is skilled to build a particular genre. In this case the prototype is to be on testing the first goals that would give signs of high engagement levels in a new market or a new genre bash.

In my opinion, prototypes are the best way to test the effectiveness of mechanical design at low cost and risk. A simple and relatively inexpensive way to put the initial design into practice, assuming a relatively low cost for the company, which results in a lower risk for the final product. Today, in "indie" companies, I don't see a better way to start on the road to placing a quality and proven product on the market for the different platforms available. Obviously they do not guarantee the success of the product, but they do guarantee a minimum of proven quality with a lower level of investment/risk than working directly on the final design without prototyping.

For Unity Devs, invest in building out your personal prototyping tool kit. For the types of games I typically work on, here are a few essentials I keep as a clone-able project folder that lets me prove out ideas quickly: 1) ARCHITECTURAL CODE - patterns and systems for regularly necessary functionality like state machines, behavior trees, events, tasks, and service locators. 2) COMMON SYSTEMS - dynamic object pools, spatialized SFX systems, volume controls, input mapping, etc. 3) CHARACTER CONTROLLER COMPLEX - a humanoid character with a basic interaction policy system built in 4) SHADERS AND ASSETS - when won't you need a door or wavy grass? 5) UI KIT - always need a menu, no need for it to look bad

Rapid, cheap iteration is key to hypothesis testing in design. Always use the cheapest (in terms of time) possible toolset to get answers as early as possible. You can "playtest" a game's metaprogression in an excel spreadsheet or as a tabletop game. Marvel Snap tested out their idea of the "double the stakes" mechanic by playing Hearthstone and imagining they had access to the doubling mechanic, and whether it made the games more compelling. Prototypes are an experimental tool, each experiment can make do with different equipment. Choose yours based on the experiments you're running.

This falls into the category of 'well you would say that', but I think good quality audio really can be a quick and inexpensive way of greatly enhancing a prototype, even if it's grey box, as it can expand the game world beyond what you see and is an effective shortcut for making people feel an emotional connection. Also not a fan of asset packs.

I will never forget being told "is this a silent game?". Which is why you should read Paul Weir's comment as well. Sound is often the missing element in a good game prototype for several reasons: Focus on Core Mechanics Resource Constraints Technical Complexity Underestimation of Impact Iteration and Flexibility I always recommended bringing in the specialized skill set from people like Paul Weir or Bob and Barn to create high-quality sound as early as possible.

It's my understanding that these articles use AI to help be written. I think it's picked up on the Gamedev concept "Feedback Loop" and applied it to the unrelated concept of "Receiving feedback from players" That being said, the prototyping phase is definitely where you want to start thinking about how your game will encourage and discourage certain player behaviors. Something as simple as the level layout can achieve this, and you can learn what players are going to try to do, and start encouraging and discouraging from there, building off the prototype

feedback loop in games is mainly about the concept of responding to player input. when a player finds a button, he naturally tries to use it. the button opens a door that is jammed and cannot be opened yet. so how do we tell that to the player? because first, you must tell the player that yes this button opens that door it just won't open yet Not only that, you also need to tell the player why the door won't open atm. this is giving the player feedback for his action. But if the door is jammed maybe we don't do anything when the player uses the button? Now the player is frustrated he is using the button but nothing happens. A feedback loop is deeper than this example, think of a game like Portal and how it leads you from puzzle to puzzle.

Gather feedbacks and constantly test them on prototype. Identify strengths and weaknesses in the game to make the necessary adjustments. This will provide a better user experience and understand the needs better

Play your prototype, a lot, and one thing to always keep in the back of your mind is accessibility and difficulty of your prototype. You shouldn't need to tell someone how to play your prototype. Another thing, is don't be afraid of change, don't cling onto work because you have already invested in it, get into the mindset of rapid development and rapid change.

You should decide from the outset if you are making a throw away prototype or something you plan to take with you into production. Throw away prototypes offer the benefit of allowing you to hack and slash your way to a workable result. Proper coding practices? F ain't got time for that. Just get to the result and rebuild it properly in production. It's faster but you incur tech dept. I would choose this for most projects because tech debt is nothing when compared to design debt. Your other option is to build something that is more disciplined and can transition into production. Less tech debt but your learning velocity will be lower.

- Developing a game is a fun and rewarding experience. Don’t be afraid to start! - Make it simple. Try to set realistic expectations, put a deadline, and go live once you feel it’s ready - but not after 10 years of development. - Focus on what’s your strongest expertise and skills allow you to do, don’t try to learn everything. - Perhaps don’t do multiplayer games, especially MMO, and especially if you’re not familiar with replication, server-client communications, databases etc etc and have no idea how all this complicated stuff works. Single-player games are fun too!