25 Game Dev Tips for Beginners (Tips & Tricks)

I'm going to share with you 25 beginner tips and tricks for game development. This video was certainly inspired by Good Guy's amazing video of the same title. The link is below. He and I agree on some things. You'll see that, but we disagree on others. Number one, clean code is important, but it's not as important as you think. With modern hardware, you can get away with poor performing code. And trust me, I've done it with my game Pinstripe, and it had terrible code. That said, clean code is primarily helpful when you have a team or you just want to stay sane during development. Begin marketing your game before you even make your game. And I totally agree with good guys on this point. After 15 years of making games, two commercial releases under my belt on every platform, and a third one on the way, this is crucial. The point of marketing your game now is to build a built-in audience and wish lists when the game is ready. Now, if you don't have anything impressive to show, don't worry. Just treat your social media as a daily journal. Be honest. Say, "Hey guys, today I didn't get much done except for this circle." Unity and Unreal all have their pros and cons, but

they don't really matter. And I agree with good guys on this point as well. At the end of the day, game engines don't make a great game. Dedicated game developers do. Focus your energy on the first level and the last level of your game. The first level will act as a template for the rest of your game, but also because players will be willing to slog through the middle of the game if the first level created a sense of mystery and taught the player well how to play the game. Now, if the last level is great, the player will feel like the middle of the game was worth trudging through. It's not ideal, but when you have a limited time and budget, this is a fair trade-off. Get to the point with your game trailer. Your audience doesn't care about your game like you do. They want to be hooked immediately, otherwise they'll get hooked by another trailer that captures their attention. Strive to understand player psychology. Even if you're like me and you're not the best game designer, simply understanding that players need to be rewarded and punished can go a long way. Intentionally avoid making your game look AAA. Otherwise, players will buy your game, expect one

thing, and then get disappointed. Instead, strive to ensure your game's visuals communicate its dollar value. Sound is half of why your game feels great to play. Focus your energy on first studying why some games have great sound and then try and replicate that. Great sound is typically super reactive, meaning it's players immediately get feedback when they press a button. Get feedback from your social media audience ASAP. Otherwise, you may focus your efforts on aspects of game development that most players don't care about. Think of your social media friends and audience as an extension of your own brain, and then you can make decisions accordingly. Take a course before making your first commercial release. Think about how much time and money you're going to spend going in circles making and releasing your game, only discovering that you did it all wrong. So, I suggest taking the ones that are taught by actual game devs in the trenches making profitable indie games. Take a weekl long break from your game every 6 weeks. This isn't a hard and

fast number, but I just know for me, this ensures I don't give into the temptation of quitting my game. Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Release two crappy games fast before making your first commercial release. This means quickly making games over the course of 6 months or so and then releasing them on H.IO with the intention of them flopping. Now, this gives you the experience and also trains you to know how to finish something so that you're ready to dive into your first big game. Surround yourself with game devs who actually made money from their games and if possible, who are doing it full-time. The game dev industry is a tricky maze of shortcuts and honestly luck. Therefore, tap into these shortcuts and this luck. It's going to help you achieve your goal faster. If you're not the greatest artist, you could still use color to make your game really pop. Use complimentary color, that is opposite colors, to make the artwork in your game really shine. Color is not that difficult to understand, and you can use it even if you're the worst artist, and make your game stand out. Join a gamedev community on Discord. I suggest a free

Discord server like Brackchis or a paid server like my own or gamedev unlocked. Don't worry too much about the gameplay length. Instead, think about the replayability and player creativity. Now, I get it. Some of you really love linear games with a good story. And I'm the same way, but the world is changing. Young players tend to enjoy a great hook that could be played around with for hours in a variety of creative ways. So, think of games as toys instead of interactive films. Every game developer feels overwhelmed. You won't ever get to a place where you aren't juggling 10 different things at once. Code, art, sound, marketing, music, design, etc. Instead, you need to first realize that this is normal and then learn to be okay with the chaos. Your brain is actually fully under your control. I genuinely believe this. And you can force your brain to not freak out. It takes practice. The phrase, "I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay." Really helps me when I'm watching my game break apart in front of me on a daily basis. Don't let the game development community make

you feel bad or stupid. Game developers and coders are some of the worst gatekeepers I know, and they will quickly make you feel like you're doing something wrong. The truth is, most game developers are doing something wrong. But what separates you from other game developers is not doing things right, but rather just finishing something. That's why I like to ask gatekeepers how many games they've finished. The answer is usually zero. If profitability is your goal, multiplayer is your best bet. Trust me, this isn't my favorite tip, but it's true. And even Unity CEO told this to me. Multiplayer can exponentially increase your game's revenue. On that note, if you want to see a game go viral, creating streamable, creative, variable gameplay is another good bet. This because games receive a boatload of free marketing if streamers feel the game is a good fit for their channel. Games that are creative, open, nonlinear, and even allow for in-game Twitch integration. Those are the games that tend to explode

in popularity. Use assets often. The era of making games entirely from scratch is over. Instead, you can utilize code, art, and sound that has already been built. A first-person shooter pack, for example, may cost 70 bucks, but that's better than one month of building the exact same thing from scratch. Prototype your game first. This means create a hyper simplistic, almost ugly version of your game and ensure it's actually fun to play. And if it's not, changing it and figuring out how to make it funner won't be such a pain. You can polish it graphically later. Give yourself an hourly rate. Even if you don't pay yourself, if your hourly rate is, let's say, a h 100red bucks, you can estimate how much your game is going to cost. For example, if you work a week on your game part-time and it takes 6 months to finish, that's a $24,000 game. You could then compare that abstract number to other indie game developers with similar scopes, ensuring you don't try and make something bigger than you can chew. If

you want to make a lot of money with a viral game, focus first and foremost on creating a solid hook. A hook is simply an idea that hooks the player and makes them want to buy your game. So, for example, a puzzle game where you shoot portals, or a creepy game about a spider train that looks like Thomas the Tank Engine, or the hook in my game is a haunted hotel that changes layouts every 5 minutes. Focus on creating a hyperpolished demo before attempting to finish the entire game. With this demo, you can then shop it around to publishers and investors by simply sending your demo, a pitch deck, website, a trailer, all of this via email to publishers. If going full-time indie is your dream, you can actually achieve this before you even finish your game. All right, guys.