Ideation is grouped together with pitching and marketing because the latter two depend on selecting a marketable idea to begin with.
Under every category below, I try to have a rough “most relevant first” sorting.
Table of contents:
Lecture slides from Fall 2025 Game Project class:
Ideation and pitching:
Pitching_and_ideation_2025.pdf
Trailers and marketing:
https://youtu.be/0m60QbT85Tc?si=YzDJDhDu4XVfD2Ig
Talks about additive and subtractive creativity, plus other creativity recipes such as ”genre but without”, e.g., ”platformer but without jumping”, or switching metaphors: FPS but the gun is a water gun → power washing simulator.
This indie game design doc really nicely illustrates the primary mechanics using gifs: