How to Make a Functional Game Design Document Examples and Templates
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One-page designs are great for showing the relationships between different parts of your game and, by simply using bigger and bigger pages, it’s possible to show broader, more high-level concepts on a single sheet. However, it’s important to identify what is the focus of the design document and what is the detail. You might choose to use your game design document as the place to refine and share the story and the style of your game. A basic example of a simple game design document (click for the full-size version).
3. Game Mechanics
This basic example shows how you could use a Gantt chart to keep track of who will do what and when. What’s important is that each individual design doesn’t rely on other pages to do its job, which would simply be a large design guide by a different name. This is because trying to teach someone else how your design works, even if it’s just you that will read it, can often be the fastest way to find out what’s not going to work, what’s missing and what doesn’t make sense. Even this basic design can show how an idea is supposed to work relatively effectively. Using only a single page to communicate your design can work well for a few reasons. A wiki is, essentially, an online collaborative tool, that allows multiple people to access and edit the same information.
Katsuhiro Harada says he's working on a new game design document along with planning the return for the Tekken ... - EventHubs
Katsuhiro Harada says he's working on a new game design document along with planning the return for the Tekken ....
Posted: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 07:00:00 GMT [source]
How to Write Game Design Document (with Examples)
While there is some merit behind these arguments, a game design document can be very helpful if it’s done correctly. As you have already noticed, an elaborate plan is a key to a successful project. The fact that many indie dev studios and beginner teams neglect to create one makes their job much harder. As a result, they start making multiple mistakes and need clarification on their duties and workflow.
Design Docs - Crafting a GDD
I will also provide you with usable templates and a list of full game design document examples from famous games. Conversely, game design wikis offer a more flexible and collaborative approach to game design documentation. They allow multiple individuals to access and modify shared information, thereby supporting the development and upkeep of a GDD through collective contribution and revisions.
How to Make a Functional Game Design Document (Examples and Templates)
The art style is inspired by classic fantasy literature and mythology. The game’s narrative follows Arion’s journey to collect ancient artifacts that can stop Malador’s dark ritual. Along the way, Arion forms alliances with unique characters, unravels the history of the world, and ultimately confronts Malador in a climactic battle. The Grim Fandango and Silent Hill 2 GDDs are good examples of how to incorporate visual elements like flowcharts, relationship maps, and concept art into your GDD. While this is a longer example, the Deus Ex GDD has been analyzed and discussed online and by the original development team extensively and offers many insights into the GDD writing process.
Sometimes you’ll have this great idea for a game and the more you think about it, the more you want to add to it. Instead of having ten different versions of a superweapon planet, the document would show that it’s an artificially-created ring planet. If you explained Halo–using that line–to ten different people and told them to build the game, you’d end up with ten different games. If you and your team are building a simple game, you could probably get away with storing the concept in your head. It’s small enough, and you know it well enough, that every detail can be safely contained in your brain. Our team at Whimsy Games understands the importance of due project planning.
Typically, there are two elements that are common to many one-page designs. There are a lot of ways you could do this but don’t assume that a digital method is going to be the most convenient. A basic example of a map showing alternative routes through a level. Once you’ve decided what you want your design to do, you’ll need to decide the best way to demonstrate it. However, it may not be possible to design your entire game on one page. However, if you’re trying to choose what kinds of attacks should be available to the player and how they will trigger them then a “Combat controls” page could work for that.
Don’t know where to start?
If you are a solo developer, you may still find a GDD helpful as a reference for yourself (perhaps when you are mired in the "swamp" of the development process to go back and have an answer for "what was I thinking?"). Game Design Documents can be thought of as the "blueprints" for putting together a game. First and foremost, they should very clearly communicate the designer's vision for a game, and do so in a way that is useful and readable for every team member or stakeholder, no matter their discipline.
But this kind of estimation puts limits on the rest of the design, and there should be discussions with the development team to check its feasibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re the game designer or the character modeler. Even if you’re not going to write it yourself, you should know how to use GDD properly. In essence, a Game Design Document is a detailed, living plan of your future game’s design and structure.
Input from the entire design team is essential to ensure the cohesiveness of the document. After all, the GDD serves as a reference point, so-called, roadmap for the entire team. We often say that the best documentation is that which is findable and up to date, and this is certainly true for GDDs. It’s really important to organize your docs, and regularly update them so everyone can find what they need. Outside of the basics that you have outlined thus far, this one can truly make or break the feeling of a game. Too many times have I seen gamers complain about the terrible user interface, or UI.
Having a healthy knowledge of video games, young and old, is important for communicating ideas to your teammates. It helps to have a common point of reference for any concept in discussion, especially because terminology in the game development community is still not fully agreed upon or standardized. Some people call it juice, some say game feel, others still use the term feedback.
You can add a little more detail about how you are going to approach the release on each platform. So, if your game is a match-3 game, then in the previous section you’d go and describe exactly how a match-3 game would work (and adding your variations to the formula). This is (probably in 99% of games) the most important section of the GDD. It’s where you describe what your Gameplay (yes, with capital G), will be like. Genre classification in a GDD involves defining the game genre and flavor by categorizing the game into specific genres such as action, adventure, simulation, shooter, etc.
While it’s good to be flexible at some points during the creation of your game development guide, there comes a time where you need to “publish” it. It’s a document that should be thorough enough and specific enough to let a team of people build a cohesive, consistent game. It is the kind of document that will inform every decision your team makes. Treating it as a rigid blueprint kills creativity in the team and builds a wall between the ideas and their implementation. Being afraid of deleting and trimming content is just as bad and will lead to your GDD becoming so bloated and outdated that it's impossible to navigate.
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