Game Design and Development: Code, Psychology and Analytics (Paperback)

Outstanding. I kept finding reasons to come back to it.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. If you have the prerequisites, this is an easy recommendation. I will be keeping it on my desk rather than the shelf.

Worth every page. I have already recommended it to two colleagues.

A colleague recommended this and I can see why. It does something that few technical books manage: it respects the reader's time. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.

I got a lot out of this, even if a few sections felt rushed.

I have been working with javascript for a few years now and I still found plenty here that was new to me. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.