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Summary: The Best Game Design Book on the Market
Review: While Swords & Circuitry bills itself as "A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games," the truth is that it's the best game design book on the market for just about _any_ genre--particularly for designers who want story and character to play a large role in their experiences.Even if your project is more Survival Horror than RPG, Swords & Circuitry is the one book that covers all the topics most important to game designers: Story/Character Development, Gameplay, Scriptwriting, Proposal Formatting, Design Documents, and World Creation. (And if you're considering this book specifically because you want to design an RPG, there are--as you may have guessed--plenty of chapters dedicated solely to that genre.) If you're an aspiring designer who dreams of making the next Ultima, Baldur's Gate or Final Fantasy, this book is the perfect primer to get you started on the theory and the specifics of game design. And if you're an industry vet who...well...dreams of making the next Ultima, Baldur's Gate, or Final Fantasy, this book is a great resource that offers excerpts from successful proposals and design documents. Plus, by reading it straight through, you'll fill in plenty of gaps in your game design education--gaps you didn't even know you had.
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