Book written by Scott Rogers, game design expert who work on games like Maximo series(PS2), first God of War, where he Design epic level with Hydra boss Battle. Later he worked on Darksiders, and many other titles. 

This book is great introduction to the concept of video game design. On roughly 500 pages author describes all basic concepts of game design, this book focuses on design of console action games with protagonist and levels. But concepts like writing Game design Document can be useful for other genres as well. This is second edition of book first  published in 2010. This edition contains 18 main chapters(levels) and 11 bonus ones. Main chapters covers with little depth topics like Three C’s( character, camera , controls), level design, combat, game mechanics. And briefly touches subject like sound, monetization,  multiplayer games or publishing.

Book chapters are filled with charming illustrations that represents the concept of the topics. Writing is very light, what makes it easy to read for people with no experience in game design.

While reading design chapters, first game I thought about was Dark Souls series, and how this game breaks almost every rule in this book. After all, rules are made to be broken. And games like Dark Souls are the best example.

To conclude,  this book is more practical approach to the subject. You will not find any source code here. It’s perfect book for aspiring game designer who want to make games similar to the one designed by Author(team he worked with), but it’s not very useful for non-typical games. Over 500 pages is not enough to cover even one games genre. Every chapter could be a subject of whole book by itself. After all, worth reading. Stay Awesome!