I've been mentioning several books throughout my various posts lately about Game Design, so I decided to do a single post that lists them all together and gives a little info on each one.

General Game Design:

The first book I recommend to anyone is The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses (Kindle version) because of how it approaches game design from it's simplest form and slowly teaches the reader what is important about each aspect.  I also highly recommend the The Art of Game Design: A Deck of Lenses to go along with it since they can be used on their own for very quick flash card activities to build your game design sense.

One of the first books I ever read specifically on Game Design was Game Design Perspectives and I have fond memories of the book to this day.  It covers a broad array of Game Design issues and topics and was a very easy read.

Game Designer Skills:

Each chapter of Challenges for Game Designers (Kindle version) covers a topic important to Game Designers and then it also includes 5 challenges that you can complete to help hone your design skills.

Every Game Designer should spend the time it takes to learn Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop CS4 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques (Kindle version) does a great job of teaching the beginner as well as teaching the adept user some new tricks.

Level Design:

I've been searching a long time for a good book that focuses on Level Design and was pleased to come across Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice (Kindle version) recently.  I've only scratched the surface of this one, but from what I can tell...it's really comprehensive and does a good job of covering all aspects of level design and it's relationship with all other disciplines.  I'm really looking forward to digging deeper in to this one.

Brainstorming:

David Perry on Game Design: A Brainstorming ToolBox (Kindle version) is a massive book full of ready to use ideas to help improve brainstorming sessions.  It's organized in a way that makes it easy to find the type of information you need for a particular idea quickly and is a blast to use.


Creative Thinking:

A Game Designer has to be a creative thinker and Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People is all about creative thinking and how to get better at it.  

I was recently recommended Crisp: Universal Traveler as a guide to creative problem solving and reaching goals.  Everyone I've talked to about this book agrees that it's worth it's weight in gold and this version is the original in reprint.

I think this covers all of the books I've mentioned before along with a few new additions.  I'll go into further detail on some of these books in later posts, but would highly recommend that any aspiring Game Designer consider diving into these right away.