How are you prototyping your game ideas these days?

Noaln

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking about the gap between having a game concept and actually testing whether it's fun.

For years, my workflow was: write design doc → set up engine → build basic systems → finally test mechanics. By the time I could playtest a core idea, months had passed, and I hadn't gotten any player feedback.

Recently I've been exploring AI-assisted prototyping tools to speed up that initial phase. These tools let you go from text description to a playable foundation in hours rather than weeks. It's not about replacing development—more about handling the scaffolding so you can focus on gameplay iteration.

Curious how others approach this:

Do you prototype mechanically or just mentally first?
Any tools or workflows that have significantly cut your iteration time?
For solo devs: how do you handle the "build everything yourself" challenge?

Would love to hear what's working for people these days.

100goats

Good questions!

I prototype my game with a goal in mind for each iteration.

Generally, I build a prototype from engine and basic systems, get feedback on it, change the game based on feedback and loop back to getting feedback on it.

I prototype mechanically first because prototyping mentally has its limits and is just not comparable to the real world environment of different players playing the game and having different opinions on it.

MrM

Claude Code or Codex, use a text only framework like LibGDX.

JoshRoberts

Prototyping game ideas is a topic I'm deeply passionate about. As a PhD student who works part-time at Last-Minute Assignments, I remember the rush of creating a basic prototype in college, only to be held back by my lack of coding skills. I was so stuck that I'd look for cheap computer science Assignment Help just to get the mechanics working. It's a fascinating and essential part of the creative process. Cheers.