It feels like ages ago since I began the journey of writing this book. In its first year, more than 4500 copies were sold, and its reception exceeded my wildest expectations. I am thankful to all those who bought it and also to those who took the time to spread the word to others. Because technology develops at such an unrelenting pace, however, the work of a good author is never quite finished. In this revised edition of the book, you’ll find most of the same material from the original (although some of it has found a permanent place online), as well as what I hope is new and exciting coverage of more advanced topics like mobile development for devices.

Game development is a strange hybrid of many skills and styles merged together. One can argue that games are the most complicated form of entertainment to create. They not only require solid coding, attractive design, and sound user interface decisions, but also the best games all share one particular aspect: they’re fun to play. This “fun factor” can be especially elusive because it is so subjective. Different genres of games appeal to different people in different walks of life. Very few games, if any, are going to appeal to everyone, everywhere, all the time.

That said, the most popular type of game for players on the Internet are what have been termed “casual” games. If you’re not familiar with this phrase, casual games are meant to appeal to a wide audience and focus on simplicity and approachability over depth and realism. This is not to say that some casual games are not deep and realistic, but the audience for a complicated tactical simulation on a console is very different from someone killing 10 minutes on his or her lunch break at work. Casual games can fall into any number of genres, from classic arcade-style games like Pac-Man to puzzle and logic games like Tetris. In fact, both of the titles I just mentioned have one thing in common: they are both products of an era in game development (from the late 1970s to mid-1980s), when the focus was not on spectacle and moviequality graphics and audio, but rather on creating games that were first and foremost fun to play.