This is the most challenging course out of the first 4 in the specialization, but you are given invaluable assets such as third person camera script. Whiteboxing and grid layout are very irritating, but I imagine they are essential steps in larger scale game development.

I have the same judgement about the course as I had with the previous two. The theory part is fantastic. The practical part however is lacking and the two feel quite disjointed.

Pro's:

- Lot's of interesting topics are discussed in theory that I never thought would form part of my interest.

- The theory doesn't require a degree to understand but still has good depth to get you thinking and broaden your horizon

- Even if the practical part is lacking you'll still learn a lot about using Unity as you have to finish your project. You learn the most about making games by making them :)

Cons:

- It's great to have a good looking game based on loads of assets and scripts made already. But that way you'll end up clueless when starting to make a game yourself. I'd rather have a unexciting looking minimalist game where I really understand the mechanics then a pretty looking black box.

- The discussion forum has a regular amount of people posting problems. I yet have to see someone from the teaching team respond.

In the end I would still recommend this course. The lacking practical part - unity tutorial - you can also get from lot's of other places for cheap/free. The theoretical part definitely not, that's why it's totally worth it!

The theoretical parts are great

Really well planned and the way they teach you how to implment the designs philosophies, the tech and creative aspect is really well done!

The course is very well-paced, easy to understand. This course teach me a lot in terms of game designing and planning.

Great course. Lead to extensive learning and hands on building

It was an incredible experience

I learned so much!

En general el curso es excelente. Pero las peer review pueden tardar mucho y ser bastante injustas (ya sea en reprobar a alguien que merece pasar o al revés), y se usan muchos recursos prefabricados.

Quite decent course to get started in learning how to make 3D platformer games in Unity. The downside is just the usual: People commenting random stuff in the automated discussions, or spamming with posts to get reviews for their projects, and lack of any more meaningful interactions. In my case, I passed the project but my grade wasn't the best, checking the stats in itch.io I noticed that people didn't even play the game or download it, and yet I got poorly graded and no feedback at all from the peers who graded me... On the other hand, I tried to be as objective as possible when grading peers, gave them good feedback and any extra suggestions when possible. So one of the weakest part of the courses I've seen in this program, is the quality of the peers. It seems a lot of people want to get certificates in Game Dev, but not many are trying to actually learn how to do stuff, I don't see many putting that much effort, and they put even less effort when grading peers (if any at all). Which is a bit surprising, considering that in game dev the most important for anyone wanting to get into the industry, is actually building up a decent portfolio. And in regards to this and the other courses, how peers behave is important because of the biggest assignment/grades here are based on peer reviews.

Очень интересный (и полезный для новичков) курс, правда русских субтитров иногда не хватает.

very good course for real learners

good class

I like it

gfhgb

gh

This course series provides a lot of very interesting and useful background information regarding different aspects of game development, in the theory lessons. However, the theory lessons are pretty much disconnected from the practice lessons. As for the practice lessons: It is nice and convenient to have an extensive set of premade assets that allow you to fairly quickly build a nice and complete 2D or 3D game (just make sure to replace the music). It allows you to directly dive into level design and game mechanics, and having fun with play testing. It must be said that the intern doing the practice lessons knows his way in the assets very well. This causes him to navigate lightning fast, which tends to require quite some pausing and replaying. This gets pretty annoying after a while if you try to play along with the videos. Also, many steps that could use some explanation are left unexplained, so sometimes it's difficult to get a good feeling of what you are actually doing. I think it's important to mention that there are some downsides to the use of an extensively developed system of prefabs and scripts that largely remains a black box for the trainee. Quite some time is spent on learning how to use and configure the provided assets, which in fact has nothing to do with Unity itself. These steps are required to put the game together, make it work and learn about level design and so on. But, because the possibilities to reuse these assets and scripts in games of your own are very limited, that's useless knowledge if you want to build your own game. Of course, if you are an experienced programmer you can dive into the scripts to learn from the code and the concepts used, but then you'll be reverse engineering. Also, the distinction between MSU-specific functionality and actual Unity Editor functionality is not always made clear, which can be a problem if you are new to Unity. Because very little time is spent on explaining the underlying code, you will not be able to build your own game from scratch after completing these four courses. This might be addressed in part 5, the capstone project, but I haven't done that one yet. If you really want to learn about how stuff works under the hood (that is, developing C# scripts), I strongly recommend to follow the four-part "C# Programming for Unity Game Development Specialization" by the University of Colorado, available here on Coursera. You don't need C# experience and you'll be introduced to the Unity Editor as well. The assets are simple and limited (you'll have to create some yourself) and the resulting games are low level and 2D only, but it's an excellent way to learn the underlying mechanics and how to implement specific behavior in 2D games by hands-on experience. The primary reason for me to follow the Game Design and Development course series is that it addresses 3D game development, which is left untouched entirely by Colorado's specialization. In fact, the Colorado University Programming Specialization and this Game Design and Development course series complement each other very well with little overlap. Here, I have learned how to create a 3D game in Unity. And, as said, this series contains a huge amount of interesting information about the game development process, like working in a team, the creative process and a lot of other non-technical aspects of game design and development. That is very useful knowledge if you want to enter the Game Development industry and several things can very well be applied in other branches, too.