There is value in prototyping your game idea. The first idea you come up with may not be the best one. Ideas are cheap and can be easily interchanged, but once you commit to an idea completely, you can no longer go backwards.
Just imagine this scenario for a moment.
You create your game and you’ve invested hundreds of hours into an idea that you came up with on a whim as a good game idea. You’re married to the idea that this is a good game, but when it finally gets into the player’s hand they don’t find it fun at all! No one finds your game interesting and it’s all downhill from there.
If we start prototyping game ideas, we can change that issue by creating basic games without any graphics. Focus on the core gameplay loop. The core game loop may not be fun. That core loop is where the player spends the most of their time; the actions a player spends the most time participating in during a play session. But, if we know early what we could improve on, we can do a lot more with our ideas.
By testing that core loop early through prototyping, we can prevent the waste of resources on a game idea that’s not actually fun! Maybe our idea wasn’t as glamarous or as cool as we thought. It may look different in your head than how it feels in reality. This is an important idea to keep in mind, because it’s hard to compare these two side by side.
Prototype early, iterate on your gameplay. Don’t get married to your ideas!
With that said, I hope you continue to work on your games!
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