Rapid Prototyping

Rapid prototyping is one of the greatest things humans have ever come up with. This method is about faking it until you make it and has a lot of advantages. For example if you want to make a new menu in your game and test it; you don’t have to actually code a thing. With that said, Rapid Prototyping can absolutely take place inside a game engine too! Just be mindful of the level of fidelity and you should be good.

Generally speaking, designers do not develop the games and instead find a way to show their ideas; e.g. by showing sketches or documents, or by faking it until they make it. With that said, if you want to learn about e.g. Unreal Engine or Unity, checkout our catalog and sign up for them if you haven’t already.

To start a rapid prototype, you may just cut out some buttons out of paper and try out various layouts first. You might ask, why do that when I can do it on a screen? And you are right, you may also do that on the screen - maybe in Figma or whatnot. I find it much more fun to actually be able to have a physical piece to move around, especially if you are doing this together with others in the same physical space. It encourages collaboration and creativity in a better way especially in early stages of the work.

For example, you might have an NPC or a bunch of cars that are supposed to move around in your level; sure you want to have AI handle their movement eventually, but at first, you can simply move them along a spline or vector just to see how it would feel. In other words, you just fake it first, try it, if it turns out good, you keep it, if not, you kill the idea and move on to the next!

Let me show you a couple of methods to make lo-fi prototypes.

Role Playing: this is one of the most fun lo-fi prototyping methods I have for you! If your game is narrative based, or when you introduce a new character, you can roleplay the dialogue or the scene with your team (or an AI). I highly recommend going in for it, make a helmet with paper and put it on your head or create a staff, or simply use figurines - make it fun and immersive. That is if you are exploring various stories, movements, tones etc.. You can also use this to roleplay your users, e.g. pretend that you are at a party and want to play a game with others, or you have come home from school or work and want to play a game. One of the greatest advantages of this method is how it enables us designers to empathize with the users by putting us in a relatively realistic scenario and this way you gain access to what the users really want and try to tap into their worlds.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to record your roleplaying sessions so that you can review and analyze them.

Sound Sketching: sound is one of the most important aspects of an experience. Unfortunately, it is also an underrated aspect of game development for beginners. To take your game design to another level, and try out various sound effects, I want to encourage you to e.g. use your phone to record some sound effects, or dialogues for your lo-fi prototype. Implement them in your prototype and see what it does to the game experience that you are creating. This could produce sound effects that you can use in your role play, or the demo of your game!