Ask HN: Any recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?
I’m new to game dev and struggling with my first project, Space Zero. I’d love recommendations for resources (books, tutorials) to learn game design—especially after my demo flopped. For context, I shared it on Hacker News, Reddit, and Product Hunt recently, and here’s why I’m making it, plus what I learned.
I grew up in Korea, a quiet kid hooked on Civilization and Minecraft—games were my escape, teaching me through play. After military service, I dropped college to co-found Disquiet, a social network for software builders. Now, 1.5 months into Space Zero with friends, I want it to be a space where people create and play together. Personally games shaped me, and I’d love to give that back.
But I’m clueless. don’t know design or mechanics. Our demo (collecting/crafting) got 500 signups in 4 days on HN/PH, but feedback was tough: - No clear goal, felt aimless. - AI crafting items lacked purpose, just swing the result. - Too barebones for a demo.
Posting on Reddit’s indie dev sub (my first try) got some “you did it wrong” too. It stung, but I see now: purpose matters, mechanics need depth. I’m reading The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell—it’s great so far, but I need more.
Any books, videos, or communities that helped you grasp design or make fun mechanics? I’ll keep building Space Zero quietly, aiming to fix these gaps. Any recs mean a lot to a newbie like me!
You need to make multiple games and think about what did and didn't work. Very few developers it was their first game. The early PC developers were pumping out multiple games a year.
While it won't help with real time games, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanism, will get you thinking about game mechanics.
If you want to make social games, then read The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html There's also 21 years of blog posts worth reading here http://habitatchronicles.com/category/general/
Also don't signup-gate web games, players need to be able to play them instantly, without an account.
I design board games and I think one of the most under utilized skills is studying other games. (There is old advice that says if you want to be a writer, then read more books.) Go back through all the games you like and write up what you love about them. Then, and more importantly, think a lot about HOW the game makes you feel that way or HOW the game gives you the opportunity to explore in some directed way. Then take that lens and re-evaluate the game that you made.
Every board/card game I design starts with a single key idea or mechanic or theme; but they all have a single cornerstone. Every playtest and design change is always looked at through that lens. If there isn't alignment, then you have two choices: ignore the change or considering resetting your cornerstone given what you know now. This really helps to stop thrashing and give focus to your game as you iterate.
The Art of Game Design is a very good jumping off point; it's how i got my start, and it gives you a lot of windows to look through.
A few years after getting that book, I started to work professionally with people building games, mostly white-labelled projects or contract work, which was the studio's bread and butter. But actually working with people developed my understanding of a) the relative value that artists, designers, and animators bring to the project, relative to my own set of skills and b) how to solve the sorts of problems that ship games. I am a programmer, and I use my programmer skills to give designers and artists what they ask for.
All of that to say: the best next step is working with folks, ideally some who have had experience. Book learning will only get you so far.
That being said, here are a few more books I have seen recommended in my sphere:
- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (this is not about games, but design generally)
- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
- Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory (this is a technical book about modern game engines)
Finally, Liz England (a designer who lowkey helped me not lose hope when I was breaking into the industry) has/had a blog where she talks about game design books. I cannot personally vouch for the titles, but I trust Liz England [1]
[1] https://lizengland.com/blog/game-design-library/
Godot game engine has been good to me, I have not made any original games but I have copied some games with a high skill ceiling, it is very important to have a high skill ceiling because otherwise it feels aimless, games like Advance Wars or Mega Man Battle Network have high skill ceilings but are not too difficult to create in 2D tile systems, as soon as you get into scaling the game with more units, more power ups, etc. then it starts to really feel like it has an aim to become stronger not just a cool thing to look at for 5 minutes
Games like Mario, Pokemon, etc. succeed because they have large teams of people making a large world, most individual game devs try to re-make these games and are very overwhelmed trying to create large worlds that hundreds of people worked on together
I've learned a lot of great general game dev info from Tynan Sylvester's book [0] (creator of Rimworld). Has good info on motivation, rewards, timing, goals, design philosophy, etc.
I have next to no game dev experience and the book is a great intro to a lot of foundational topics imo. NB: the book isn't very technical and is an easy read!
[0] Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences https://a.co/d/8Im68r8
I don't know anything about game dev, but just a bit of support on the feedback:
> feedback was tough: No clear goal, felt aimless. -
There are plenty of successful games that fit this description. There are plenty of unsuccessful ones as well. I would encourage you to lean in to the type of game you want to make. If the game is suppose to be an escape, does it bring that feeling? If the game is suppose to be fun, is it actually fun to play?
Most things just take time to learn. You probably won't get any worse at game design as time progresses, so you are doing the right things and the suggestions in this thread should help you on the path you are already on.
Gamedev City [0] is a new community and could be a good place for feedback and finding resources in general. As for sharing demos and collecting feedback I personally think itch.io [1] is pretty good.
As far as game improvement is concerned it's important to get in a growth mindset and keep focusing on improving the game, which it sounds like you're already doing.
Finally if you haven't already I would recommend creating a discord or some kind of forum for you game (itch.io has free hosting for them) just so you can collect feedback from people who are interested and invested in it.
[0] https://gamedev.city/
[1] https://itch.io/
If you're planning to make games, understanding game design is a must—otherwise, it's easy to build something that just doesn’t feel fun. I'd highly recommend checking out Game Maker's Toolkit on YouTube. It breaks down game mechanics brilliantly and is a great resource for both beginners and experienced devs.
You should talk to people in person for feedback and have a conversation about it. Anonymous posts in messageboards are not an effective way to get feedback.
I'm the developer of a boxing game called Leather, that I've had in the Play Store and App Store for about 6 or 7 years now.
As I'm working towards a Steam release I've been digesting a lot of this guy's advice - https://howtomarketagame.com/
Whilst much of his guidance is of course marketing rather than design related, he does write about genres and game mechanics that attract players - specifically on desktop rather than mobile. It's worth a few hours of your time to check his stuff out.
Agreed. I spent a year going down the wrong path before finding this resource, but it saved me from going four more years down the wrong path.
Gonna check it out, always down to learn more about what draws players in. Appreciate it :)
I wouldn't hung up on the feedback too much. I also think minecraft has no clear goal and feels aimless and yet it's one of the most popular games in the world. If the game is fun for you, there will be a niche with the same taste for sure.
I looked at your demo video, and website.
A game is like a story or movie, or any other creative work: foremost, you need a vision; and then a way of communicating it effectively to an audience.
The design, mechanics, and marketing are just functional details - essential, of course, but pointless without that overarching vision.
Your vision should be powerful, purposeful, and exciting (to you). It's more than just an 'idea'; there should be feelings associated with it (urgency, mystery, thrills, whatever) and a sense of a consistent inner 'story'. It fuels the passion that drives you to solve a series of problems that lead to game creation.
A relevant short essay: "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle" by Ray Bradbury. (And probably the rest of the essays in his book, "Zen in the Art of Writing"...)
(Note: I have a game in the iOS App Store)
Watching this guy's devlogs was extremely informative:
https://www.youtube.com/@randyprime
Extremely informative on what not to do. He never prototyped his game to see if the mechanics would actually be fun, rewrote it in a more tedious way every time he got bored, and then stopped working on it and took everyone's money to go vacation around the world for a few years. Randy is perhaps the worst game dev role model I can think of.
I just checked out your prior submission. The title didn’t really sell what the game is, it just lists some technical features you like. Then opening the link takes you to a page with a play button, and clicking it takes you an account creation window asking for my first and last name and email. At that point I backed out because there’s no way I’m signing up for something I don’t know and can’t try.
In the early days of Minecraft it was a free dev build that ran in the browser and had no accounts, as new take on a game called Infiniminer
This is really great feedback and not even trying to sell you on a marketing book or something.