Prototyping & Playtesting #1: “Build Ugly, Learn Fast”
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By William Anderson
AwakenGames.com – Prototyping & Playtesting Series
🛠️ The Big Idea
Perfection kills momentum. If you’re serious about making great gameplay, you need to give yourself permission to build something quick, messy, and testable. The sooner you can play it, the sooner you can improve it.
“The faster you can play your idea, the faster you’ll know if it’s worth keeping.”
🎮 Real Talk from Experience
When I was early in my career, I thought every idea had to be fully developed before anyone saw it. But I quickly learned the truth: polished features don’t fix bad ideas.
At CAPCOM and Namco, we often worked in grey-box spaces and with placeholder art because what really mattered in early phases was feel, not finish. I’ve played prototypes where the player character was a square and the enemy was a red triangle — and the gameplay was already fun.
That’s the goal: Find the fun before you waste time polishing systems that might not work.
🧩 Prototyping Tips
- Use boxes and blobs. Don’t wait on final art. If a jump or punch doesn’t feel good when your character is a square, it won’t feel good when he’s fully animated.
- Focus on one question per prototype. What are you testing? A mechanic? A movement system? Don’t try to test five ideas at once.
- Fail fast and adjust. If something doesn’t feel right in the first minute of play, tweak it. Or scrap it.
- Write nothing down until you’ve played it. Let the prototype speak first.
👀 Pro Tip: Playtest Before You Explain
Hand someone your prototype and say nothing. Watch where they go, what they do, what they ignore. If they don’t “get it” — the problem isn’t them. It’s the design.
🎬 Final Thought
Every great game starts ugly. That’s not failure — that’s process. The sooner you build something raw, the sooner you’ll start making it real.