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There's no single book that can teach you everything about making games. These nine recommendations cover different parts of development, from design thinking and prototyping to programming, game feel, player psychology and production.
Want to make better games? Sometimes the best thing you can do is step away from the engine, close the tutorial you've had open for three hours and pick up a book.
Game development books can offer something that's difficult to squeeze into a 15-minute video. They can break down why certain mechanics work, how developers approach problems, what makes an interaction feel satisfying and what actually goes into taking a game from an idea to something people can play.
We've picked out nine books worth adding to an aspiring game developer's reading list, covering everything from Game Design and programming to game feel and the realities of shipping games.
They're not ranked from best to worst. Each tackles a different part of development, so the right place to start depends on what you want to learn.
If you're only going to start with one broad Game Design book, The Art of Game Design is a strong place to begin.
Jesse Schell explores games from dozens of different perspectives — or “lenses” — encouraging designers to examine their ideas from the point of view of the player, mechanics, balance, story, experience and much more.
Rather than simply giving you a list of rules for making a good game, the book gives you questions you can repeatedly apply to your own projects.
That's particularly useful for aspiring designers. Learning how to evaluate an idea can be considerably more valuable than being told whether a specific mechanic is good or bad.
Best for: Game Designers and developers looking for a broad foundation in design thinking.
View The Art of Game Design on Amazon →
Knowing Game Design theory is useful. Actually testing whether your ideas work is another matter.
Game Design Workshop places a strong emphasis on the practical process of designing games, including prototyping, playtesting, understanding players and iterating on ideas.
It's particularly useful if you're at the stage where you've got plenty of concepts but need a more structured way of turning them into playable experiences.
Instead of becoming overly attached to the first version of an idea, the process encourages you to build, test, learn and change it.
That's a habit worth developing early.
Best for: Aspiring Game Designers who want a more practical, iterative approach to development.
View Game Design Workshop on Amazon →
For programmers, this one tackles a problem that becomes increasingly obvious as projects get larger: keeping your code manageable.
Game Programming Patterns looks at common programming patterns and how they can be applied specifically to games.
The goal isn't simply to make something work. It's to help developers think about structuring systems in ways that remain understandable and maintainable as a project grows.
That's particularly valuable when moving beyond tiny prototypes and into projects containing interconnected gameplay systems, states, events and objects.
It's also available to read online from the author, making it an especially accessible resource for developers wanting to explore the material before picking up a physical copy.
Best for: Game Programmers and technically minded developers wanting to improve their code architecture.
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Before creating RimWorld, Tynan Sylvester worked as a designer on BioShock Infinite. In Designing Games, he digs into how games create experiences through systems and player decisions.
A major theme is that developers aren't simply designing mechanics in isolation. They're creating situations that produce emotion, tension, excitement and memorable stories for the player.
That makes this particularly interesting for developers working on systemic games, where several relatively simple mechanics can interact to produce situations the designer didn't explicitly script.
If you're interested in understanding why players remember certain moments long after they've stopped playing, there's plenty to think about here.
Best for: Designers interested in systems, player choice and emergent experiences.
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Some Game Design books can get pretty academic.
Level Up! takes a more approachable route.
Scott Rogers covers a broad range of topics including mechanics, characters, levels, enemies, puzzles and communicating design ideas, while keeping the material accessible.
That breadth makes it particularly useful for someone still figuring out where they fit within game development.
You might pick it up wanting to learn about general Game Design and discover that you're particularly interested in level design, gameplay systems or another discipline entirely.
Best for: Beginners looking for an accessible introduction to multiple areas of Game Design.
Why does moving a character around in one game feel incredible while another game with similar mechanics feels slightly… off?
That's the territory Game Feel explores.
Steve Swink examines the relationship between player input and what happens on screen, looking at areas such as controls, movement, response and feedback.
It's an area of development that's easy to underestimate. Players might never explicitly compliment the acceleration curve of a character or the feedback accompanying an action, but they'll absolutely notice when playing a game simply doesn't feel right.
For anyone working with character controllers, combat, platforming or other highly interactive mechanics, it's a fascinating subject.
Best for: Gameplay Designers, Programmers and developers interested in making interactions feel better.
What actually makes games fun?
That's a considerably more complicated question than it initially sounds.
In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Raph Koster explores the relationship between games, learning, patterns and challenge.
Rather than focusing on how to build a particular mechanic, the book steps back and considers what players are actually doing mentally when they engage with games.
It's a useful read for developers who want to think beyond individual mechanics and consider why players enjoy learning, mastering and eventually overcoming the systems designers put in front of them.
Best for: Developers interested in the psychology and theory behind player engagement.
View A Theory of Fun for Game Design on Amazon →
Not every useful game development book needs to teach you how to design or program something.
Sometimes it's equally valuable to understand what making games actually looks like.
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels tells the stories behind the development of several games, including The Witcher 3, Stardew Valley, Uncharted 4 and Diablo III.
The result is a look at the challenges, changing plans and difficult production realities that can sit behind games players eventually experience as finished products.
For aspiring developers, it's a useful reminder that games rarely emerge from development exactly as originally imagined.
Best for: Anyone considering a career in games and wanting a behind-the-scenes look at development.
View Blood, Sweat, and Pixels on Amazon →
If you want to go deeper into Game Design theory, Rules of Play is one of the more substantial books on this list.
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman examine games through concepts including systems, rules, play, interaction and culture.
It's considerably more academic than something like Level Up!, which means it probably isn't the book we'd recommend everyone start with.
But for someone who already understands the basics and wants to examine games at a deeper theoretical level, there's a huge amount to explore.
Best for: Game Designers looking for a deeper and more academic exploration of games and play.
View Rules of Play on Amazon →
You could read every Game Design book ever written and still struggle to make a good game.
The important part is putting the ideas into practice.
Build tiny prototypes. Change variables. Break things. Give your game to someone else without explaining how it works and watch what they do. Take a concept you've read about and see what happens when you actually implement it.
Books can give you frameworks, terminology and decades of experience from people who have spent their careers thinking about games.
But eventually, you have to open the engine and start making something.
Which game development book has taught you the most — and what would you add to this list?
Keep Calm and waka waka...
