12 Games of Christmas

Three stars feels about right. Useful, but not essential.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.

Excellent from start to finish. No filler, no padding.

I picked this up after getting stuck on a project and it turned out to be exactly the right book at the right time. The author is unusually honest about where the simplifications break down, which I appreciated. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with game development.