The 7 Best Game Design Books (2023 reviews)

We consider a game design book to be a worthy investment in the long run. We are here to help you choose the right one for your purposes from all the best available products in market today.

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Our Top Picks:

Best Overall: Buy: Scott Rogers Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best For Design Patterns: Buy: Robert Nystrom Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best New Book: Buy: Jesse Schell Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best For Game Development: Buy: Flint Dille Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best For right audience: Buy: Tynan Sylvester Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best Informative Book: Buy: Steve Swink Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best For teaching: Buy: Tekinbas Game Design Book READ REVIEW

Best Overall: Scott Rogers Game Design Book

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If you want nothing short of the optimal book for your regular usage, this scott rogers game design book is certainly a wise investment. This is an excellent book, both for new game developers and more experienced ones. It makes the book entertaining and broadly informative. It is a fun book that is relaxing to read and a good guide on how games are made. It feels like a manual to create successful games, as in games that people like to play, keep playing till the end and then recommend to other people.

It is full of silly drawings and lots of great information. It helps you organize and document your design. The print is very good and the quality of papers and images as well.

• A virtual treasure chest for video game designers
• Fun, funny, and easy to follow
• Thoughtful, insightful, and just plain well written
• A must-buy for anyone who is interested in becoming a game designer

Best For Design Patterns: Robert Nystrom Game Design Book

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The robert nystrom game design book gives the top-tier book a run for their money by offering flagship specs at a much more affordable price. This is a good book for all developers not just game devs. It presents design patterns in a clear, thoughtful, and thorough manner that makes it an enjoyable and rewarding read. It contains concrete examples and critical explanations on when to use or avoid certain Design Patterns. The random bits of humor strewn throughout the text do a wonderful job of livening up a somewhat dry topic, without distracting the reader from the actual point.

It is written in a very friendly manner, concepts are explained clearly with beautiful examples derived from games and experience. The writing is conversational, fun, and straight-forward, which makes it easy to read. The book is also a good source for developers who want to learn design patterns and how they are implemented in C. This is a good book for all developers not just game devs.

• Easy reading for those that are not novice programmers
• Definitely applicable to more than game dev
• A must-have for any software engineer, game industry or not

Best New Book: Jesse Schell Game Design Book

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There are so many "lenses" that help you question your game in ways that you never thought of before. This book somehow walks that fine line between a deeply informative academic work and a highly personalized take on game design. There is a lot of insight here for budding and experienced game designers, and also for those who are interested in how to make games of all kinds, in or out of the game industry.

This book uses a good quality paper where you can use a highlighter on and it won't bleed through. It explains the fundamental principles of games and allows you to understand it's structure and how to manipulate them to create good games. The format, writing, and flow make this an easy to read book. It looks like other games plus this book is worth the investment of time and money. The packaging is awesome, and the book is in high quality.

• One of the new comers and featured product
• Delivers what they promise

Best For Game Development: Flint Dille Game Design Book

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The flint dille game design book should be able to handle its purpose and duties with ease. The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design balances the artistic and the technical sides of writing smoothly. This book is mostly based on people that already work in a gaming industry, and that you are leading a team to make games. It gives relevant realistic experience written in an upbeat humorous and succinct style. It also includes the numerous other factors that are essential for making this game a reality, such as presenting the story to companies for creation.

Regardless if you are young or old, new or experienced, this book takes your position into account for writing the story to your game. Its really clear on the obstacles, pleasures and steps they have when creating a game. This book also helps experience writers get in grips with designing and writing games.

• 5 -gives you a layout format to help you when you are writing
• The ultimate guide to video game writing and design
• A must have for any aspiring designers of games

Best For right audience: Tynan Sylvester Game Design Book

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This informally written but vital handbook focuses on creating emotional and cognitive experiences for the end-user of games and the testing and iteration process that will lead to creating this experience. It is all about the experience of gaming, and how to make it work for you. The engines of experience provides an insight into how game mechanics and game events produce and change emotions in the player, and how these effects can be utilised to generate experiences. If there is one thing that becomes clear when you read this book, it is that game design is even more complex than you might imagine.

This book is not really a " how to " of game design, there are no list of rules to follow or exercises to complete. The last third of the book is the best as it delves more into the "process" of creating a game as opposed to the "craft" part. It will give you insights on what you should focus on, how to organize the design process and common pitfalls to avoid. The book contains much personal experience from the author, it is also well researched and contains examples and advice from other experts to back up the opinion of the author.

• Recommended for anyone who want to step in the gaming industry
• Game design for people in the trenches
• Good brand reputation

Best Informative Book: Steve Swink Game Design Book

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The steve swink game design book is satisfactory and appropriate and fits well with your daily usage. There are many black arts to computer game design and Steve Swink's elegant writing captures the essence of what is needed to be understood with great clarity, offering examples, analogies and clear common sense references that help the reader to effortlessly digest the essential points. It provides a taxonomy for describing the internally felt sensations of computer gamers. It takes a number of milliseconds for a human to process the visual input, interpret it, and react.

This book is a study of the components that make a game compelling and fun to play. It's the impulse that makes you lean forward when mario makes a leap of faith. It is easy to understand even while going into very complex and intricate explanations. It includes video and other interactive material to help teach the information. It is great book for programmers with enough knowledge of programming to make basic games.

• Highly recommended for professional game designers, animators, and programmers
• Insight into the craft of game mechanics
• A new and interesting perspective on game design

Best For teaching: Tekinbas Game Design Book

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate book. The tekinbas game design book is exactly that - it's a simple book that hits all the right notes. If you want to learn to design your own games and understand gameplay and game design at a much deeper level, there is no substitute for this book. It is about the design principles of all games, whether they are played with bits, bats, chips or checkers. It is scholarly, intelligent, and should provide plenty of food for thought to games researchers and desiners alike.

This book covers a remarkable range of ground without sacrificing depth or specificity and has terrific suggested exercises and in-depth recommendations for further readings. It is made for a very thorough look of games. The text is rigorous, well researched, informative and incredibly enjoyable.

The book is well written, it is thorough in its analysis, has references and bibliographies that allow you to explore the authors' research yourself. For game designers who wish to have a more analytical mind on their craft, this is the best book available.

• A must read for any aspiring game designer
• Makes you think about what is a game
• Lot of satisfied buyers