ABSTRACT
By this time in a game’s design life cycle, it can be played in a rough shape and the vision should be clear. But it’s still early days and there will be plenty of problems to solve before it’s time to do any more fine-grained tweaking. This chapter provides 12 different tools making it possible to resolve common types of bigger issues that can come up in games. Some tools rely on careful playtesting and observation, while others use analytics or the collection of data to determine both what kinds of problems are present and potentially how to resolve them. This process requires broad strokes, but it’s also important that the commitments made with the tools from the previous chapter are respected, so this is also where some ideas may have to be left behind or altered in significant ways because it turns out they don’t work as intended. The chapter has several reminders to keep going with validations from previous chapters, and to keep moving forward.
