Prototyping and Testing: Finding the Fun

”The design process is about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers.”

Jonathan Ive, Former Chief Design Officer of Apple

Prototype is not just a stationary idea sketched on a paper, it's something you can test and try out for yourself. The prototype is there to help you answer one question: is this enjoyable? From this, you can start working further. If it is enjoyable, could it be even more so? What is it that makes it fun?

Pen and Paper Prototypes


You don't always have to test things out in your game engine. Sometimes some pieces of paper are all you need. If your game is a strategy game, for example, you can make the game using just a pen and paper. It's faster than having the programmers create all the systems so it lets you change things on the fly.

Digital Prototypes


Digital prototypes are useful if you need to test something "physical" in the game world. Like the player movement or physics-based puzzles. Prototypes are not supposed to look pretty, you'll waste time polishing something that will not end up in the actual game. Do the bare minimum that lets you test efficiently.

The Purpose of Prototypes

No matter what type of prototype you're making, it should answer questions you have and solve problems. Don't prototype things for the sake of prototyping, every prototype should have a purpose.

When to Prototype?

Most of the prototyping will likely happen during pre-production. Testing the major features out and seeing if the idea only works in your head should be done before committing the whole team. You can prototype whenever you feel unsure of something: would the players like this? Should this work in some other way?


Game jams are a good place to learn how to prototype quickly, due to the time limits that are usually present during those events. Multiple features need to be tested very fast, and there is rarely enough time for polishing.

Fail faster. Don't refine a feature if you're not sure it brings value to the game. Prototype small, fast, and often to test out your designs in a safe environment so that no developer needs to waste their work. Abandon bad ideas quickly.

Game Testing

Game testing is in many ways very similar to prototyping. However, while the purpose of prototyping is to test out features before going further into development, the purpose of game testing is to generally refine the entire game. First, you should start by doing internal testing, in which you can start refining the key features and components of the game with the team. Internal testing is all well and good, but there are always things that you'll miss. This is where external testing comes in. Large AAA companies tend to have testing groups and QA departments entirely for this purpose.


During long development cycles, it's easy for people to grow blind to their own work, which means they may not notice potential issues the same way as someone who is playing for the first time. Getting feedback from outside sources is important, as it gives you an entirely different perspective from someone who doesn't have an emotional attachment to the game.

What Are We Testing Again?

Generally speaking, there are a few different key areas that developers should focus on during testing. The importance of each area depends on the style of game beind made.

  • Feature testing: Testing all the features and mechanics.
  • Finding bugs and glitches: Actively searching for potential flaws and the reasons behind them within the game.
  • Game balance: Balancing the overall game so that it's more fun for the player.
  • Online features: How well do they work (this one applies to multiplayer games only)?
  • Narrative and writing: Is the narrative consistent? Testing helps discover potential flaws with the story or characters.

You can either focus on all these at once during more expansive testing sessions or specifically zoom in on one key area. Both strategies can work, and it's more about when you decide to do it. For example, finding bugs early on during internal testing will happen no matter what. Testing and expanding gameplay features is something that should be a focus early during development, meanwhile balancing the game should be a concern later down the line. Having clear goals on what you want to test during a specific testing session can make all this much less muddled. Professional game testers are obviously more familiar with this, but smaller studios and teams can rarely rely on such luxury.

Let's finish off with a handy video about how games get balanced.

Balancing Videogames

Exercise: Prototypes

Exercise: Prototypes

Answer the following questions.



Balancing is an important part of game development, as it makes the games more enjoyable and playable. But how do the players get inti toe game and learn its mechanics? Open the next chapter and find out!