In this expert talk, Renaud Forestié, Gameloft Montreal's Gameplay Director, reveals how his team of five can design a mobile game in just two to fourteen days by focusing on the game-feel and experience. Renaud will share Gameloft's design best practices for speeding up and improving the quality of design iterations. You'll leave the session with an overview of a process for creating compelling and memorable experiences in a very short timeframe while gaining valuable insight into your game's potential.

1. FAST PROTOTYPING
with Unity at Gameloft Montreal

2. RENAUD FORESTIÉ
@reuno

8. PROTOTYPING TEAM
MONTREAL
• 1 year
• From 1 to 5 people
• 30 projects
• 1 day to 2 weeks per project
• From one to five prototypes per project

9. WHY WE PROTOTYPE
• Evaluate fun/feasibility/appeal
• Sell the idea to others
• Reduce risk
• Experiment
• Serendipity

10. HOW WE MEASURE
SUCCESS
• Team’s self evaluation
• Internal Playtests
• External Playtests
• Open Beta
• Per project metrics

11. 10 TIPS CATCH ME GAME FEEL

12. SHOWTIME!
It won’t take long

14. 2 PEOPLE
2 WEEKS
JUST ME
1 WEEK
JUST ME
2 WEEKS
3 PEOPLE
2 WEEKS

15. 10 TIPS
The fourth one will drive you crazy

16. • No need to prototype everything
• Where do you want to experiment?
• What do you want to demonstrate?
1. PICK THE RIGHT SCOPE

17. Pick the right scope.

18. 2. FOCUS ON THE UNKNOWN
• Don’t prototype things that already work
• Identify core features
• What’s unique to your game
• Not just gameplay, but also art,
sound, and more

19. Focus on the unknown.

20. 3. KEEP THINGS SEPARATED
Three Stacks :
• Gameplay (cubes / blockout)
• Art (key art, concept, characters, animations…)
• Meta

21. Keep things separated.

22. 4. EMBRACE FAILURE
• Kill ideas early
• Learn from your mistakes
• Rebound from them

23. Embrace failure.

24. 5. FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT
• Strive for « good enough »
• Reuse material as much as you can
• Determine the minimum effort required

25. Fake it til you make it.

26. 6. MOVE FAST AND FIX THINGS
• Solid foundations will allow you to iterate faster
• Prepare for experiments
• Separate structure and functionality from look
and feel

27. Move fast and fix things.

28. 7. PICK THE RIGHT TOOLS
• Main tool :
Game engine, Photoshop, Powerpoint,
After Effects, Pen and paper…
• Toolbox :
Houdini, Jenkins / HockeyApp, Gitlab, MMTools

29. Pick the right tool.

30. 8. MAKE IT AWESOME
• Focus on that core feature the player does all the time
• Put the effort in where it will have the most impact

31. Make it awesome.

32. 9. TEST OFTEN AND TEST CORRECTLY
• Have random people play it
• Let them figure out what’s fun or not
• Internal & external playtests, open beta

33. Test often and test correctly.

34. 10. HAVE FUN
• Create a game you’re proud of
• Speak up
• Show your work

35. Have fun.

36. MORE TIPS!
• Avoid procedural
• Test on real devices
• Keep things simple

37. MORE UNITY!
• Asset Store
• Cinemachine
• Odin
• Amplify Shader
• Effectcore’s VFX packs

38. MORE TOOLS!
• Magica Voxel / Oculus Medium
• Asset Forge
• The Noun Project / game-icons.net
• Bfxr
• Asesprite

39. CATCH ME
7 days prototyping process example

40. PITCH
• Pacman with abilities
• Thieves and cops
• Setting : Arsene Lupin / Sherlock Holmes

41. DAY 1 - MOVEMENT
• Quick iterations to get the feeling
right
• Grid based movement that doesn’t
feel clunky
• Tons of options to play with : speed,
acceleration, deceleration, auto
move, direction queue, and more.

42. DAY 2 – COLLISIONS
AND CAMERA
• Raycast based collision detection
• Reuse of pre-created blocks to build
the modular grid
• Cinemachine for the camera

43. DAY 3 - AI
• A* from the Asset Store
• Custom tweaks to fit the grid
movement controller

44. DAY 4 - ABILITIES
• Tested phasing, teleport and jump
• Settled for jump after a few user tests
• Modular ability system, ready for
more

45. DAY 5 - COINS
• Basic highscore system
• Automatic coin generation (works
whatever the grid)
• Easy to tweak rewards and positions

46. DAY 6 – CONTROLS
• Three alternate control modes to pick
from
• Customizable dead zones, gravity etc
• Also supports keyboard / gamepad
for testing purposes (and switch port)

47. DAY 7 – MORE ABILITIES
• Adding a new ability is super fast
• Custom inspectors for game
designers

50. DAY 7 - MOCKUP
• Mix of free stuff from the asset store,
previous projects and new quick and
dirty blocks
• Fast lighting setup

51. GAME FEEL
It’s all about the feedbacks

52. MICROINTERACTIONS
Communicating feedback or result of action
• Vibration when you turn your phone to mute
• Pull to refresh
• Twitter’s heart

53. 0. Initial version

54. 1. Projectiles

55. 2. Explosions

56. 3. Shells

57. 4. Recoil

58. 5. Muzzle Flash

59. 6. Haptic Feedback

60. 7. Explosions

61. 8. Camera Shake

62. 9. Dynamic Light

63. 10. Freeze Frames

64. 11. Flash

65. 12. Spread

67. Bonus 1. Slow Motion

68. Bonus 2. Health Bars

69. MORE ABOUT FEEDBACKS
• Microinteractions - Designing with Details
by Dan Saffer
• Juice it or lose it
Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
• "The art of screenshake"
Jan Willem Nijman from Vlambeer

70. MMFEEDBACK
• One line setup
• Instant juice

71. MMFeedback

72. MMTOOLS
• Many tools like these
• Build and share your own toolbox!

73. KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Pick the right scope
• Make it awesome
• Iterate quickly and test frequently

74. WE’RE HIRING!
Come and say hi

75. THANK YOU!
Renaud Forestié
twitter : @reuno