Game Development Resources

YouTube channel focusing on game design and mechanics.

YouTube channel discussing the more philosophical sides of game design.

Against the idea that every game should be based around just one mechanic.

A very cool video about the development, history, and inspiration behind Sonic the Hedgehog.

Video discussing the design of the classic Sonic style, focusing on Mania in particular. Has a great explanation of how Sonic differs from the style of Mario, and what makes Sonic great.

Very cool video about the sound effects of Five Nights at Freddy's and how they enhance the experience and atmosphere, whether being helpful or detrimental to the player.

Video going into the details of the procedural music of the "Tanks" minigame in "Wii Play".

Another video from Scruffy describing the simple but effective "procedural" music of Pan-Pan.

A detailed guide on the physics and various mechanics of the 2D Sonic games.

A short blog post about improvements made to classic Sonic physics in the upcoming "Sonic Studio" fan project.

An entire thread visually demonstrating such techniques.

Talks about stuff to make a game feel better. For example, jumps are automatically buffered: if you press jump a few frames before you hit the ground, you jump as soon as you hit the ground instead of having the input "dropped".

One of the Celeste creators lists the techniques they used to make the game feel good; similar to the video above.

Well-thought out video essay describing the mechanics of a hypothetical 3D Sonic game. Could be very useful as a base/starting point.

Video about ideas for how Sonic bosses could work in a way that complements/accentuates the standard gameplay.

A cool article showing and describing different types of video game cameras, even including gifs of each type.

Video explaining a variety of camera techniques and how they are combined together to make a smooth, cinematic experience.

A very inspiring talk discussing techniques for procedural and synthesized audio in games, as opposed to the use of static pre-rendered samples.

Video of Doom 2016's composer discussing the story and details of how the soundtrack was developed. Notably, despite its sound, no guitars were used.

Deep dives into the music theory aspects of the Genesis Sonic games.

Explanation of one method for visual depth/height sorting for objects in 2.5D games.

A list of ways to come up with puzzle level ideas.

A talk giving examples of various puzzles and the interesting ideas and concepts behind them. The talk also has a second and a third part.

A platformer game/demo made by Game Maker's Toolkit allowing you to modify various parameters to try out different platforming physics styles.

A talk about puzzle game mechanics, discussing human working memory, fun, puzzle simplification, handcrafted vs procedural, separating action and puzzles, fun vs exhaustive design, and more.

Information about the technical side of the development of Kandria, a game written in Common Lisp.

Information on wrangling/normalizing data from analog control sticks.

Links to various resources about pathfinding, AI, game design, algorithms, OO, etc.

Includes some relatively low level information about the coding done for the "M.C. Kids" NES game.

Video about automated testing and bug reporting tools built into The Talos Principle and its development environment.

Overview of the A* pathfinding algorithm including how to implement it, with visualized examples.

Linked in Friday Factorio Facts 385.

Video about circle/rectangle collisions; a good introduction to a good collision detection and resolution strategy. Worm does not use this method since it does not "sweep" and thus does not work for very fast-moving objects.

Information about changes to Dolphin's FPS counter's averaging method.

Various useful blog posts about designing good retro-inspired sprite art.

A meditative side scrolling swimming game with fully generative music. The link is to a video of the music UI.