Quickstart Guide to Game Design

An enjoyable and informative read, though it could have been shorter.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. Good value for the price and worth the time it takes to work through properly.

Not quite what I expected from the description, but there is material here.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. Three stars feels about right. It will stay on my shelf, but it will not be the first one I reach for.

Almost excellent. A second edition could easily push it to five stars.

I was looking for something that would bridge the gap between tutorials and proper reference material, and this does that well. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The balance between theory and practice is well judged; neither side dominates. Solid, and I would buy another book from this author without hesitation.