Common game screens

Games are made of lot of things. You have the main loop/levels which is the hearth of your project but there are also other things that exist around that for the convenience of the player.

Those very common elements of a game are the screens:

- Splash screen: It shows during the (pre)loading of assets when you first open the game
- Intro: After preloading, some games show animations that constitute the intro.
- Main menu: Links/Buttons to other scenes.
- Help: Instructions on how to use the game
- Leaderboards: A ranking of all players, including you
- And many others.

You can have a game that starts straightaway with your main loop, but that's like going to a restaurant where nobody asks you what to eat, the food is presented, you eat and leave without even asking you if you want a dessert :)

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Game design documents

Put it simple, game design documents are documentation about games that cover things like what is the game about, what is the target audience, what are the game mechanics and to some extent how the game is going to be developed.

Writing a game design document is useful to validate a game idea before starting its implementation and is also a valuable document to atract new team members and/or investors.

Here there is a list of some document design documents we've found and could serve you as a foundation for your game:

Organize your game dev Game pitches Runaway studios GDD An Ant's life Project Scarab Deathwith 1931

Our games on Itch.io

For a while we were publishing our HTML5 games in one tiny server delivering static content, and it was fine, but if something lacked hosting our own games is exposure.

Hosting your games is not just hosting them, is also having to actively linked them, mention them and share them or they are not going to be seen.

Then we discover Itch.oi, a very simple but amazing platform which is similar to Steam but much more open in the sense you don't have to pass any filter to publish your games (https://ponup.itch.io), and once uploaded them they can be seen and discovered by a ever growing number of gamers.

If your game is for desktops, you can also upload ZIP files with installer, and even set a price that Itch.io collects all the money of your sales and then is transferred to you.
If you are and indie looking for yet another sale channel, give Itch.io a chance, it's definitely a great platform and completely free so don't wait to publish!

One game, multiple platforms

One of the best and worst parts of developing games Today is the number of target platforms you could use to market your game.

There is a proliferation of game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, Wii) and in addition to that there are many mobile devices (leaded by Android, iOS) and then you have good old desktop and the shiny new Web.

Each platform is appealing for their very own reasons, but they also bring different challenges. The decision of what platform your game is aiming for is based on things like team experience, budget (both time and money) and of course, also your target audience. (are they young? are they casual gamers?)

Here at Ponup Games we do Web and mobile games mostly because of the time and team size constraints. We would love to work on bigger projects eventually, but this is all we can do at the moment.

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