Overview of the games

Many beginning developers make the mistake of attempting to tackle far too large a project early on. Modern blockbuster video games are the result of the efforts of hundreds of programmers, designers, graphics artists, sound effects technicians, producers, directors, actors, and many other vocations, often working for years to create the game.

That does not mean that the efforts of a solo developer or small team need to be dull, boring, and unplayable. This book is designed to help you develop a solid understanding of 2D game development with XNA Game Studio. By the time you have completed the projects in this book, you will have the necessary knowledge to create games that you can complete without an army of fellow game developers at your back.

In this chapter, you will build your first XNA mini-game, chasing squares around the screen with your mouse cursor. In subsequent chapters, the following four more detailed games are presented:

The games are each presented over two chapters. In the first chapter, the basics are implemented to the point where the game is playable. In the second chapter, features and polish are added to the game.

Each game introduces both new concepts and expands on topics covered in the previous games. At the end of each game chapter, you will find a list of exercises challenging you to use your newly-gained knowledge, to enhance previous games in the book.

We will focus on Windows as our platform for the games presented in this book. That said, the code presented in this book requires very little in the way of changes for other XNA platforms, generally only requiring implementation of platform-specific controls (gamepads, touch screen, and so on), and consideration of the differences in display sizes and orientation on non-Windows devices.