The Beginner

Game Design
Toolkit To
Kickstart Your
Journey
Resources

Game Design Learning

Some resources to start studying and understanding Game Design.

• The Art of Game Design: This is the most famous beginner book on Game Design. It will give you a good
introduction to how games are made and how Game Designers work.
• Theory of Fun for Game Design: This book is less known, but it’s one of the most important. It shifts your mindset
beyond creating games that are just “fun to play”.
• GDC Vault: This is the official Game Developer Conference YouTube channel. GDC is the most important
international conference about the game development world, and here you can find many interesting conferences
from professionals, including many just about Game Design.
• Game Maker’s Toolkit: This YouTube channel is the most famous one in terms of Game Design. His videos are not
such practical ones, but you can get a good understanding of how games work behind the scenes.
• Design Doc: This is another YouTube channel with lots of in-depth game design analysis about games around many
interesting Game Design Topics.
• Adam Millard: This YouTube channel is much more on criticism than strictly Game Design, but his analyses are
perfectly suited for beginner Game Designers starting to understand all the nuances of games.

Unity Learning

Some resources to learn the Unity Engine and improve your prototyping skills.

• Unity Learn: This is the official Learning Platform of the Unity Engine. Here you can find tons of tutorials with
exercises to learn every basic, intermediate, and advance feature of the engine.
• Blackthornprod: This is a YouTube channel that focuses on 2D games in Unity. You can find many devlogs and
tutorials on how to implement specific features.
• Code Monkey: This is another YouTube channel heavier on programming than engine features. Here you can find
many commonly helpful game features for basically every game genre.
• Tarodev: This is another code-focus YouTube channel with many tutorials about 3D and 2D games. His tutorials are
really in-depth and well-explained.
• Jason Weimann: This YouTube channel is one of the biggest ones in terms of number of videos. He’s also a game
programmer, so his videos are a little bit technical, but there are plenty of full guides, even for absolute beginners.

Prototyping Assets

Some assets to make your prototyping easier.

• Game Art 2D: A website with lots of royalty-free 2D game assets both in a standard cartoon or pixel art style.
• Quaternius: A website containing more than 500+ assets (primarly 3D).
• OpenGameArt: One of the most famous websites for game art assets. There’s more material you can imagine, and
you can even find some sound assets.
• FreeSound: Probably the most famous website for free sound assets of any kind.
• Sound Jay: Thousands of royalty-free sound assets divided by category.
• Game Icons: This website has thousands of game icons you can use for your User Interfaces screens completely
free.

1
Tools

• Unity: It’s hands down, the best Game Engine for beginners. It has a learning curve like any game engine, but it’s the
easiest and less overwhelming to pick up.
• Draw.io: A software for making flowcharts and diagrams for your game design documents. It’s easy to use, free, and
packed with any feature you might need.
• Figma: The most famous wireframing platform. Perfect for creating User Interface prototypes. It has a premium plan,
but you won’t need more than what the free tier offers.
• Notion: The best software for writing your Game Design Documents. It has a little learning curve, but there are
infinite tutorials to bridge that gap. Even here, the free plan has everything you need.
• Google Sheets: The easier and smarter option for creating complex tables and spreadsheets to link (or even embed)
in your documents.
• Inkscape: Basically Adobe Illustrator, but free. Perfect for creating Level Design 2D layouts.
• Trello: The simplest and yet effective solution to manage your tasks while working (even if you don’t work in a
team). There are software with many more features than Trello out there, but trust me, you don’t need them to start.

It’s Not Over Yet…

Tools and Resources are good, but they’re not enough to succeed.

The perfect hammer doesn’t guarantee building the right house.

That’s where the Game Design Compass comes in.

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• A detailed breakdown Game Design topic

• A Unity Engine tip
• The best Game Design resources from the web

We’ve created this newsletter specifically for aspiring and beginner Game Designers.

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