UNITY FOR GAMES ⟶ E-BOOK
THE UNITY
GAME DESIGNER
P L AY B O O K
,Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Pitch your project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Keep it simple and know your audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Understand the actual player. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Be brief and use visuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Prepare your presentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Test for marketability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Career progression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Narrative designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Level designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Gameplay designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Game economy designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Get started in Unity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
GameObjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Scene view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Scene Gizmo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Package Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Prefabs: Reusable GameObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A welcome window in the Inspector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Adding your document links to the top bar . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Use assets and tools from the Asset Store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Top picks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Importing assets into your project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Create gameplay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Visual scripting to create gameplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Working with a team on Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
, Modular gameplay systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Input to control characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
The Input System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Set up your first character controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Create game flows with UI and Unity Events. . . . . . . . . . 58
Put the UI to work: Unity Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Build game levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Use the FBX Exporter for refining with artists. . . . . . . . . . 71
Timing and animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Camera design for gameplay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Cinemachine: A Virtual Camera system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Creative ways to use Cinemachine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Juice it up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Microinteractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Randomization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Animation Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Avoid linearity when lerping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
The Particle System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Post-processing effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Appendix: Share and playtest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Testing for performance and bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Benchmarks tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Share the game build. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Share and back up your project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
How to get Unity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
How to learn Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Discover Unity art creation tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
, Introduction
The Unity Game Designer Playbook aims to inspire and instruct game designers
who want to learn how to prototype, craft, and test gameplay in Unity. Whether
you study game design, are starting out in your career, or have years of
professional experience, you can reference this guide as you begin to add Unity
skills to your profile.
Unity is the most widely used game development platform, so gaining Unity
skills can open up new opportunities for you, even if you work on a team using
another engine.
The contributors to this guide are game designers both within Unity and from
our community. The content reflects their vibrant creativity, advanced expertise,
and unique mix of skills and interests.
You’ll find a broad, even eclectic, mix of detailed introductions to Unity tool sets,
instructional sections that you can follow in your own project, and a wide variety
of examples that illustrate how to create and juice up gameplay in Unity.
Some of the topics covered include Editor navigation and beginner C# scripting
concepts, visual scripting, creating input, setting up character controllers,
greyboxing and level-design tools, cinematics, microinteractions and
randomization, special effects, and more.
The Unity ecosystem has a lot of assets and projects to kickstart your game design journey.
© 2021 Unity Technologies 4 of 103 | unity.com
THE UNITY
GAME DESIGNER
P L AY B O O K
,Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Pitch your project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Keep it simple and know your audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Understand the actual player. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Be brief and use visuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Prepare your presentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Test for marketability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Career progression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Narrative designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Level designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Gameplay designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Game economy designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Get started in Unity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
GameObjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Scene view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Scene Gizmo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Package Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Prefabs: Reusable GameObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
A welcome window in the Inspector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Adding your document links to the top bar . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Use assets and tools from the Asset Store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Top picks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Importing assets into your project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Create gameplay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Visual scripting to create gameplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Working with a team on Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
, Modular gameplay systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Input to control characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
The Input System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Set up your first character controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Create game flows with UI and Unity Events. . . . . . . . . . 58
Put the UI to work: Unity Events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Build game levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Use the FBX Exporter for refining with artists. . . . . . . . . . 71
Timing and animation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Camera design for gameplay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Cinemachine: A Virtual Camera system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Creative ways to use Cinemachine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Juice it up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Microinteractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Randomization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Animation Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Avoid linearity when lerping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
The Particle System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Post-processing effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Appendix: Share and playtest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Testing for performance and bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Benchmarks tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Share the game build. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Share and back up your project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
How to get Unity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
How to learn Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Discover Unity art creation tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
, Introduction
The Unity Game Designer Playbook aims to inspire and instruct game designers
who want to learn how to prototype, craft, and test gameplay in Unity. Whether
you study game design, are starting out in your career, or have years of
professional experience, you can reference this guide as you begin to add Unity
skills to your profile.
Unity is the most widely used game development platform, so gaining Unity
skills can open up new opportunities for you, even if you work on a team using
another engine.
The contributors to this guide are game designers both within Unity and from
our community. The content reflects their vibrant creativity, advanced expertise,
and unique mix of skills and interests.
You’ll find a broad, even eclectic, mix of detailed introductions to Unity tool sets,
instructional sections that you can follow in your own project, and a wide variety
of examples that illustrate how to create and juice up gameplay in Unity.
Some of the topics covered include Editor navigation and beginner C# scripting
concepts, visual scripting, creating input, setting up character controllers,
greyboxing and level-design tools, cinematics, microinteractions and
randomization, special effects, and more.
The Unity ecosystem has a lot of assets and projects to kickstart your game design journey.
© 2021 Unity Technologies 4 of 103 | unity.com
