Advice on where to start? please?

Try the XNA Ireland Challenge Schools cup, the 2010 theme is Pac-Man. Nice way to use your Blender Skills in anger, devise a new gameplay and learn a new language C#

Lucan Community College were this years winners with Healthy Asteroids.

I’ll prefix all of the below with a standing IMO to avoid any arguments…

Game Design Books I’ve Read And Liked:
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"Game Design" by Bob Bates – Great book, covers the length and breadth of the games industry and taking a concept the full way to the market. A solid read, somewhere around 400 pages, its a relatively "light" read.

"Game Design: Theory and Practice" – Richard Rouse – Pretty good book, plenty of step-by-step discussions on puzzles, challenges, rules, balance, etc. Hefty book, but it comes with some sample game design and technical design documents which I think add a lot of value to someone starting out.

"Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design" – Both of these authors have been around since the 80’s Atari’s days and have a lot of wisdom to pass on. Nice, light book, simple and well structured, again covering all the material you would expect (puzzles, level design, abilities, etc.) but they use relatively up to date examples which you’d probably be more familiar with.

Books That I Am Currently Reading:
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"Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals" – Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman – this book has come highly recommended to me from several mates, so I’m making my way through it. So far, its good.

Most if not all of these are on Amazon.com (or possibly google books) and should keep you busy for a while.

The only other investment I would recommend is picking up a NES, SNES, or Mega-Drive and as many games as possible for those consoles. I find its far easier to de-compose "game-play" and get to the core of the "fun" in an old 2D game than it is for a 3D game.

B.

If your into getting your hands dirty….would like to do some soldering….try one of the console kits on adafruit.com .

BTW the list Jediboy put together looks spot on.

Just to suggest another book in addition to those Jediboy has mentioned:
I recommend ‘Chris Crawford on game design’ as being worth a look.

You mightn’t always like or agree with what he says, but its quite a readable book, and theres a few places where he really hits the nail on the head.
I’d recommend a read, especially if you are interested in working on your own indie projects, as its really interesting to see how he went about developing his earlier one man projects – back when AAA video games could be one man projects!!
Its also good if you plan on honing your design skills writing simple games, or even pencil and paper type ones.