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Game design isn't just sitting at the desk and staring at an empty paper. It's about so much more, like gathering inspiration from all around us. Ideas rarely come from nothing, so having other activities helps ideas eventually form in our heads.
This lesson's aim is to give tools and ideas on where you can go look for game designs. Just looking around is a great start, actually. Let's start straight away and take a closer look.
Answer the following question.
Inspirational sources vary from game designer to game designer. However, many designers have multiple interests that help them in designing games. Usually, designers have skills in arts such as traditional 2D art or modeling complex 3D levels.
Books, movies and life in general can be great sources of inspiration.
Nowadays, we have a lot of great sources for inspiration, and combining them may result in something entirely unexpected. Internet is full of visual and audial material that could light up your mind.
What would emerge if we took a picture of a fighter plane, like a F/A-18 Hornet, and the delicate Moonlight piano sonata from Beethoven, for instance? The possibilities are endless. Adding more into it might result in a new game design that will wow the players.
As a designer, you should play games with various themes. Compare how they implement game mechanics, how the story unfolds and they bring characters and environment alive.
Not all inspiration and ideas come from entertainment. Game designers also need knowledge of more theoretical elements like psychology or color theory. Having a basic understanding of human behavior really helps designing games that generate emotions like terror or happiness.
Designing a horror game is demanding, as you have to invest in the atmosphere that gets the player to be cautious and suspecting at every corner until finally, the jump scare happens and causes a rush of excitement in the player's brain.
Colors carry strong meanings across cultures. Red, for example, is the color of passion in many cultures.
Knowing the fundamentals of 2D art, like color theory, can have a major effect on a game's overall mood and theme. Colors carry meanings, although they may change from culture to culture.
Interactable props and tools are usually highlighted with colors to make them easier to notice. A sword with purple highlights is rarer and stronger than one with blue color, for example. Basically, we can attract the player's interest with colors and divide tools into their own categories at the same time.
Now you get the idea of how the world of design doesn't only include playing videogames, since broadening the field of view will also make us understand how to approach the area.
Understanding the basics will become major in your game design and make the game even better.