Where to start a game Thread

I made the experience that it's best to start with character, animation and programming, covering the game mechanics.

Example:
There are a lot of people, playing around with UDK, try to redo the old Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Until now, I think one has the chance to achieve it. Even though he hasn't build a map of all hyrule (somebody else did), he advanced most far by just scripting the game mechanics:

Do you agree with this starter sequence?

I prefer to start with planning the levels, then move on to the design of the game like, modeling your characters and enemies, designing the maps etc. And then I go to the programming side of the game, and finish with bug tests. But everyone has a different way to go about it.

According to Extra Credits, game mechanics are always the best place to start, even before you design the story.

Yeah he's scripted lots of things including some of the harder to do stuff like puzzles, dynamic dialogue and camera focus system.

But he has directly ripped the levels, models, and animations from the original, probably using N64 emulator and reading from vertex buffer. I don't see what's the point in the this kind of remake since you can easily play original OoT on emulator all you want.

Start game development by making sure you don't try anything too big for you. Start small. When you get more experience you can try bigger projects which you should plan according to your skills and start with a game design document.

Of course there's no stone-set rule for the best start point, but in general I would agree that mechanics are the way to go. Above all else, one should know what it is that one wants one's player to actually be doing, the actual "game" of the experience. Not to downplay all the other parts of a game too much, but I feel like mechanics take a backseat far too often.