This accessible manual packs a tremendous amount of information into brief chapters, featuring graphics-rich pages, enticing layouts, user-friendly text, sidebars, charts, graphs, definitions, helpful hints, and suggestions on the application of newly learned knowledge. The first half of the book addresses the history, appeal, types, strategies, and psychology of gaming; games as educational tools or means of raising public consciousness; and negative consequences (e.g., addiction, possible transference to real-world violence, advertising, and subliminal messages). Actual game coding isn't even addressed until the fourth chapter, but once it is, readers are guided though a step-by-step process that should allow every user to successfully start creating original games. Subsequent chapters sequentially phase in more sophisticated applications, such as art, animation, and sound. Each section offers projects and ideas for more ambitious undertakings. Other titles aming Technology (2011) and The Epic Evolution of Video Games (2013) lk about the why and the so what of gaming; this guide delivers the how. This appealing offering should prove to be a popular addition to STEM collections.