Course Introduction and Planning

Game Jams and Skilling Up

Set your goals and find your community

In this project you will learn about what's ahead for you on your journey to finishing a game! You'll also get a chance to confirm that you have the right knowledge and skills to get the most out of the course, along with links to useful resources that will help you on your way. You will also learn how to equip yourself for your journey, and meet some of your fellow adventurers.

Goal Setting and Community Building

What is the Design Process? 

Scope

Constraints and Our Theme

Concentric Design

Why Prototype? 

Assets shouldn't be liabilities

The Stages of Game Development

Planning your project

CRC Cards

Your First Milestone: Vertical Slice

Why Agile?

Vertical Slice - Part Two

Refactoring

Sprint Planning

Alpha Build

What is Playtesting?

How To Playtest

Sprint Plan

Review and Redesign

How to Release your Game

Alpha and Beyond

Bonus Content

In this project you will learn about using a design process to take your idea from a broad concept into a finished, polished game, the concept of scope will help you achieve your goal of making a game, how constraints can help you create rules to keep you in scope,  and how to use the specific design process, concentric design.

The Design Process

In this project you will find out if your game idea is fun through Prototyping. You will also learn how to make a plan for assets you will use in your game – the sounds, images, models, animations and other resources that make up a game – to avoid nasty surprises later in development. 

Prototyping

In this project you will learn how to keep a sense of the big picture by dividing the game development process into stages and milestones, hit your first major milestone in the development of a game through creating a vertical slice, and learn two planning tools you can use to plot a course to a finished game. 

Milestones

Agile Development

Professional teams schedule some time for code cleanup after each milestone so their code stays flexible and easy to work with. This project will give you some tips and general principles for this process, known as refactoring. With your vertical slice done and your code in good shape, this is where you’ll start down the road to alpha.

Writing Better Code

Playtesting is more than just asking people if your game is fun. It's a structured process for collecting useful information about specific parts of your design. In this project you will learn why Playtesting helps you collect useful information on your design and how to execute the entire process. 

Playtesting

In this project you will learn how to release your game, what the next steps are after game release, and additional tips for getting to the end. 

Release your game

Lots of people start games, but it’s surprisingly hard to finish one. This course guides you through the process used by professional game makers to develop their ideas, keep their projects on track and deliver a complete, released game. 

Explore the Unity Asset Store for game toolkits and template assets that will help you quickly design and prototype your games. These resources can accelerate your development process and help you achieve your goal of releasing a polished game!

Design and Publish Your Original Game: Unity USC Games Unlocked

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Importance of Creative Community

Feedback from your Community

Introduce yourself

Homework - Go Play Games!

Bonus Reading

What's Next? 

Importance_of_Creative_Community.mp4

Feedback_from_your_Community.mp4

In this tutorial you'll learn how to equip for your journey, and meet some of your fellow adventurers. You will learn about the importance of the creative community in the game development process, as well as, how to give and receive feedback as a member of a community. 

Unity + USC Games Unlocked

Games

Get_Ready_to_Go.pdf

In the comments section, share a little bit about yourself and your goals, so you can meet your fellow adventurers. The pinned post is the Course Welcome post - share some or all of the following with your fellow learners: 

Tell us your time zone (for example, Pacific or Central European).

Tell us your goal for the course and for your game. For example:

I want to release my first game on itch.io in 2019.

I want to make a game for my sister for her birthday.

I want to finish a game in a genre I haven’t tried before.

Describe one challenge you’ll face on the way, like “I can only work on my project on weekends” or “I’m very new to code”.

Also consider sharing your Twitch or Steam username, or other places your classmates might find you online.

Be as specific about the goal as you can, and phrase it so that you’ll be able to decide at the end of the course whether you really did it or not. Vague goals like “I just want to get better at Unity” won’t be very helpful to you.

Once you’ve introduced yourself, go read about your classmates. See if you can find people with a goal that’s similar to yours. 

Be a good community member and check in – say something nice to them or ask them a question. You’re just being friendly, but it’s the beginning of building that creative community we talked about in the videos. We highly recommend commenting on at least 2 other course members' post.

Yes, your homework is to play games!! Find and play small, well designed games to help you come up with your own. Specifically, find fun, small games to give you some inspiration for the game you’ll make in this course. Don’t get too attached to any specific game though – you’ll get the theme next week and you want to leave your options open.

Start with games that were made for game jams, such as Ludum Dare or the Global Game Jam. Itch.io and GameJolt also have a lot of good small games. Avoid games that combine story with game mechanics. That is, games like visual novels are okay, and games like endless runners are okay, but a platformer that also tells a detailed story (such as Braid) wouldn’t qualify.

Here are some other small games that will give you an idea of what to look for:

After you've played the games discuss in the comments your favorites games, why do you like them, did playing them impact the kind of game you will create, or anything else you'd like to talk about. 

These short articles and videos are packed with specific, practical tips for people making their first game. Spend some time with them to get yourself ready for your journey.

This very short article, written by professional technical artist David Wehle, describes what he learned as he finished and released his first two solo games. 

Indie developer Chris Zukowski offers a reality check, and encouragement, for finishing your very first game. He also links to other excellent resources for beginning game makers. 

Unity asked popular YouTubers Extra Credits to offer specific, practical tips and resources for beginning game makers. 

Game Maker’s Toolkit, a YouTube series by Mark Brown, breaks down game design decisions in popular games – one of the best ways to learn what works. Watch a few to understand how to play games critically yourself. 

In the next project we’ll get right into the good stuff. 

You’ll learn about the design process – how professional game designers develop their ideas into game concepts. And we’ll introduce you to the biggest challenge of all for beginning game makers: scope. 

Set your goals and find your community

1. Importance of Creative Community

2. Feedback from your Community

3. Introduce yourself

4. Homework - Go Play Games!

5. Bonus Reading

6. What's Next?

Complete this tutorial