Building and Testing a Game in Unity

So we’ve made a pretty cool game so far. How can we share it with the world? Most game engines have a way to export the project we made to some executable file, and Unity is no different. Doing so is called creating a Build.

To do this, we can go the Build Settings in the File menu.

We’ve used this screen before when learning how to load scenes. It’s even more important for setting up an external build. There’s all sorts of different platforms we can build for, and options to modify how it works. You can read more about them at the Unity Manual.

The Player Settings button is also particularly useful. The Product Name setting controls what the application window is named when it is run.

The Resolution and Presentation tab also has settings which control how large the window is when running the game, whether it plays at full screen or not, and whether it can be resized. Here we want to make sure it is Windowed, because otherwise we won’t be able to quit the game!

Finally, lets go back to the Build Settings window and click build. The new build will require a folder to keep it in, so we can make one in the project folder.

This will take a little while to complete. When it’s done, we’ll have an executable application that plays the game. We can even put all this into a zip folder to share with others, so they can play the game as well.

All done! Here’s how the game runs in its own standalone window.