The game development process can be long and daunting, spread across many let downs, road blocks, and ambushes. It can take months, if not years to complete depending on the idea, the time you have to dedicate it, and the skills of your thankless friends who join you. What happens at the end of the journey? What if the game is nothing like it is in your head, what if people hate it, what if it becomes the buttt of a pop culture joke where hipsters quote it almost as much as “All your base are belong to us.” What will you’ll find at the end of this rainbow: a pot of gold or Warwick Davis in Leprechaun: In the Hood? I can’t answer that, but you can stack the odds in your favor by making a dirt cheap, mostly broken, unimaginative and uninspiring, half playable prototype.

By designing a prototype you can really get a fix on what some of the potential problems are with the game and, hopefully, what some of its shinning features will be. It’s kind of like getting to know the mother before you date the daughter, if you catch my drift. You’ll see that, in time, some of those really great features you love so much now might not be all that great in the future, and in fact, they might just be superficial attributes that mask other problems down the road. But dating habits are a whole other article for a whole other website. The important thing to remember is that when you want to design a game, there are two things: what’s in your head and what people will play. You’ll try as you might to make these two identical, but over time, huge differences will start to change both.

When I first set out to design the game that I am currently working on, I thought that, as a concept, it was complete, and that there really wasn’t going to be much difference in the final project. I can say, with absolute certainty that I had no idea what I was talking about. The concept in my head was simply the heart of the idea. It would define all the elements that surround it, and it would be the driving force that would keep the idea alive and pumping, but in the end, it would be only a basis for other things to grow out of. I realized this when I designed a prototype by accident.

You might be wondering how one does this by accident. Without too much back story, no one believed that my idea would work, make money, or for that matter make any sense. I eventually got so frustrated with friction I was getting that I took some money, roughly $2,000, and hired a graphic designer and a Flash professor looking for some extra cash. It took the two of them about two months, but in the end I had the prototype, I had all the proof I needed to realize that … everyone was right. The game was completely unplayable.

The beauty of the prototype ended being that it provided me with questions that otherwise would have been left unasked during my daily day dreams. When I finally saw the prototype, it was as clear as day. Initially, they might have been right about the concept not working, but a few months later, once I had answered some of the flaws, people started to raise their eyebrows.

I now use that prototype as a base for showing people some of the more basic aspects of the game. I always get compliments and genuine interest because I actually have something to show them instead of talking about a pie in the sky (another benefit to having a prototype), but I always preface it with a disclaimer that it is a nonfunctioning demo and is missing some core gameplay elements (it’s our secret).

If you can spare some cash, or if you have some friends that might help you, this is the way to go. In fact, if you’re really serious, spend the money and commit to the idea. You might not like what you get at first, but it will teach you so much more than you can possibly imagine.

If you aren’t ready to put your money where your mouth is, there are other options. First, check out Flash. I purchased a few books for game programming in Flash, and you can be moving a vector ball around the screen via the ASDW keys faster than you’ll believe. It’s a great way to get some programming experience hands on and you can learn enough of the basics to get your hands dirty. The question is: are you man enough?

Good news if you aren’t. You can do ye olde amish prototype. I joke, but it is actually a tried and true format. All you need is about a hundred dollars and a few Fridays to spare. Go to Michael’s or some craft shop and go through the scrap booking aisle … hey where’s everybody going … don’t leave … ok, ok, you don’t have to go through the scrap booking aisle, but you will have to find a place where you can purchase some great visual aides for your game. Then get some dice, cardboard, and any other game board standards you might need. When you get home, your task is to make the game playable with what you have. You might laugh, but this is a practice that actually has a great amount of weight in the game development world. The fact that you aren’t in front of a console controller, a keyboard, or a monitor gets you to think outside the box, and can help you to come up with some really interesting solutions. During the development for the recently cancelled EA title Tiberium the developers showed their board game equivalent and used it to gauge the use of squads. So don’t scoff, you’re in the presence of genius. I’ll go into this more in another article.

Honestly, take time to try your idea out. It can save you a ton of time, keep you on the right track, and it can make a huge difference if you really do decide to pour hours and hours and hours into making your idea a reality. You’ll thank yourself later.