Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#

SUMMARY: All in all, I've been through several Unity and C# programming books. This one is the best, especially in its current iteration. The website is very up to date on errata and Unity changes. Mr. Bond writes clearly and with an entertaining and familiar tone, and the content is second to none. No other book is going to make a newcomer feel more accomplished from the tutorials, even if they don't always make complete sense at first. As of writing this I still have a bit more of the book and a few tutorials to do, but I am very impressed and pleased with the 2nd edition of this book. It alleviates almost all of my concerns of the first version. The tutorials (in Part 3) are easier to follow, clean up inconsistencies, and do a great job of explaining what is happening behind the code and teaching vital design concepts. I want to emphasize to someone who is treating this book truly as an "Introduction" that the code herein should be studied, not just taken for granted. It is more complex than most tutorials I've come across and truly mirrors the actual kind of coding you would be doing for any extensible prototype worth making. There are a lot of clever uses of programming patterns that are slightly glossed over, but when you're finishing a tutorial, take a moment to map it out and see what is really going on in the code. One thing that could be improved is if Mr. Bond gave a description of the next iterative mechanic he was going to code and treating it as an exercise for the reader rather than just diving right in - but to the cautious self-student this is irrelevant anyway. The tutorials (so far) do a great job of highlighting the capabilities of Unity and the utter speed at which prototyping can be accomplished. As Mr. Bond explains several times - a game is not a game until its played, and the WHOLE book is dedicated to the idea of getting to something playable as soon as possible, if nothing else for the sheer accomplishment of making a game that is interesting, while keeping in mind the ever-important scope limitations! The rest of the book (parts 1 and 2) does a great job of covering holistic bases in the gaming industry and in the C# language. Part 1 is extremely interesting, though not strictly necessary. Part 2 is vital to intensely study if you have a light programming background, but otherwise can be skimmed or referenced. A word of caution that I wish Mr. Bond would have put into an "Intro" book and was something that made me want to throw my hands in frustration sometimes. His code, from a novice perspective, is so CLEAN, polished, and clever. Then when I would write my own early prototypes it looked like Frankenstein's monster. As a beginner, it bears remembering that if your home-grown code looks right in-game, it is right. Too much perfectionist obsession over hyper-clean and clever code pushes hundreds of people away from programming, specifically from programming games. Of course Mr. Bond shouldn't equivocate on the proper coding practices, but a fair warning that code doesn't come out of the novice's fingertips looking like his would be justified. I recommend going through each part concurrently, depending on your experience and "moodiness." Sometimes I just want to code, so I flip to the tutorial I'm working through in Part 3. Sometimes I feel pensive, so I'll read the intricacies of the layered tetrad. Sometimes I lose sight of when I want to use a List, Array, or Dictionary, so off to Part 2 I go. My own personal preference is to get the paperback version - I used the kindle version for the first edition and it didn't feel right, as with code listing you'll want to flip back and forth and around quickly.

As stated near the beginning of the book, this work is for either designers who want to learn some coding for prototypes, or an engineer who wants to learn some design principles for prototyping. From that point of view, the book easily gets a 5 star. If you are beginner in the game development world (ie college student, or still looking for your first gig) you will get incredible use out of this book (and I personally wish I had read it back when I was in school). Chapters are concise, explanations on code snippets is top notch as well. As a seasoned engineer, your mileage will be a less than novices. I do wish it had more to offer on best practices/patterns for prototyping specifically. I feel book achieved that for design side, but lacked a bit for engineering side. To be fair, it is called and "Introduction" and engineering can be pretty overwhelming when first introduced, so introducing really high level concepts like prototyping patterns, agile best practices, team quality, etc would have probably been to much for intended audience. Overall, a quality book, and I'm glad I picked it up. If you are a novice, do your yourself a favor and just go ahead and order it now.

This book is a great book to introduce someone into game design. I removed a star because Bond had conflated game design, prototyping, and development with political theory during the early parts as he discussed the influences of modern culture and how sexism is reflective on the design of games (as an example). While he presents these issues as real as they are, I feel as though they are presented informally and lack any context to the book's intention to present an introduction game design, prototyping, and development to a beginner. In Bond's defense he was simply implying that video games evolve over time; fitting the culture that surrounds it. However much of that early section would not fit my definition of "an introduction to game design, prototyping, and development" and thus was purely superfluous at worst. Despite this however this book is a really well written, well informed, and quite a respectable resource for an aspiring game designer.

Some unity/programming books will just give you the code that you need and lack any decent explanation as to what it represents. And while this is sometimes useful, all the code here is clearly commented giving a brief description as you would expect from normal commenting. In addition to this (and more importantly) however, a more detailed description of whats going on under the hood follows immediately after the code. This helps considerably and prevented me from running back and forth to the documentation every two seconds. Screenshots of the associated topics are presented roughly every other page which helps with clarification if needed. Overall, great book: very clear and easy to follow.

Since others have covered the content of the book quite extensively, I'll comment on the quality of the book itself. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover or whatever, but the first thing I said when I opened my Amazon delivery was, "Wow, this is a really nice book". - It's full of full colored images, even the source code examples have their syntax colored. - The paper isn't glossy, which I like because I don't get that annoying glare when reading in a well-lit area - The pages feel nice, which is something I can't say about many of the programming books I own. - The font size isn't so small that you feel like they were trying to save trees by cutting down on pages

It's fine. Priced okay.

It has been a while since I read this book, but the lessons from it stick with me. For anyone looking for a very solid, yet complete, introduction to game design as well as game development in Unity, this is a great place to start. The author is definitely a teacher because the book is structured like a textbook, and in this case that's a good thing because the chapters are broken up into very digestible bits. There are 9 fully functional Unity projects later in the book that teach you much about structuring a game project and they vary in degrees of complexity. I bought this book purely for the game design portion as I already knew programming in Unity, and it was worth it just for that, but I also found the prototyping section to be extremely interesting and I'm looking forward to trying some of those practices for my next game.

I was looking for a textbook for computer science students who want to make their own games, and this book was perfect for that group. It started off with design - as all games should - and then segued to a discussion of implementation, ending with multiple tutorials. For me, the discussion of design is the best part (as that's what I'm weakest in). It was written clearly and straightforwardly. Some books just walk you through one giant tutorial, which tend to be tedious and, because they focus on one game, leave a lot out. This book did not fall into that trap.

Really easy to follow. Good examples. Perfect to learn both Unity and C#. I think it is required to have a programming background

What I like best about this book is it gives me the summary of what all the other game design books would of told me. I also like the idea of 8 prototypes. I haven't got there yet, but I'm sure ti will be good. Update: I'm 4 prototypes in (out of 8) and I am so impressed. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn Unity.

This book is amazing! :) ++ Fast delivery

Think nothing more of it. It is the best book by far to introduce yourself in Unity and C# development.

Excellent condition , although just a few pages in the middle are slightly folded.