Gameloft Montréal's Gameplay Director on Designing Games in Unity

The first step in the process of developing a mobile game (just like almost any other product in the sphere of entertainment) is deciding how fun it is going to be, how realistic the goals are, and how much the players are going to enjoy it. Then to estimate the future success of the game, the team carries out self-evaluation, launches internal and external playtests, and releases an open beta.

Renaud Forestié shares 10 key tips that will help you design an awesome game without spending too much time paying attention to unnecessary things. Firstly, you have to pick the right scope, meaning that even if you have a billion brilliant ideas for your game you have to stop yourself and focus on the best ones. Trying to fit a lot in one project is unrealistic and the game won't make much sense if it's overloaded with events, storylines, characters, etc.

The second piece of advice is to focus on the unknown. You don't need to keep reinventing the wheel every single time and test out things you already know work well. What you have to pay attention to, try out, investigate are the unique features of your game, the new things you've come up with. It might be gameplay, art, sound, and many other things.

One more thing you need to remember is that you have to keep things separated. That is, every member of the team should better focus on one component of the game. Some people are responsible for gameplay, the other part of the team is in charge of art, and so on. And only then everything is assembled and tested as a complete product.

The fourth key thing is learning to embrace failure. A lot of ideas are being killed early on by management, by players but that is an unavoidable part of the creation process. So instead of getting stuck with one idea, you have to be flexible and create 2, 5, 10 more versions of it. Learning from your mistakes is a natural part of growing as an artist.

One of the most crucial things is choosing the right tools for developing your game. Renaud Forestié's team mostly uses Unity for everything they do but depending on the style you are going for, on the genre of the future game, on the story behind it you might want to consider using Photoshop, AfterEffects, Houdini, and other software as well. 

You can watch Renaud Forestié's 46-minute talk on Unity's YouTube channel to find out what other tips the game designer shares with the audience.