How to Make a Functional Game Design Document Examples and Templates
Table Of Content
Detailed notes and sketches are essential to establish the identities and roles of the characters in the game. A character web that illustrates their relationships could be included in cases involving multiple characters. Visual representations are crucial in conveying the characters’ personalities and interactions within the game.
Too long to read
These might not make it into the final moodboard, but they're still a great place to start. If you’re not a highly-technical person, you’ll want to lean on your team’s game programmers and system programmers to help with this section. They will likely have a lot of preferences and opinions, and can help by doing technical diligence to figure out which tools and tech might be needed for your game.
Learn to Create Your First Game Doc
Once you have a rough idea for your level, start to create a 'top-down' map of your level. Where does your level start and how does someone finish this level? For example, is this the 'underwater' level, where your character has to avoid the sharks to stay alive? Add a note that describes your topic in 1 to 2 sentences to get started. Worldbuilding lets you define how players behave and interact in their surroundings.
Genre, Core Mechanics, and Core Gameplay
However, you need to be extremely specific, as this could muddy the waters with individual developers. Very simply, they are the visuals, sounds, animations, physics, and more. Use technical, descriptive language to describe elements of the game in detail. This will contrast quite a bit with the language you’d see on the back of the game box in the store. If you’re working with a team, you’re going to want to enter the discussion phase next. Everyone will bring something different to the project, and getting together to talk about the project can bring out the best in your unique team.
Share it with your team
Identifying that your project is short on specialists shouldn't lead to worry. There are various reliable sources to hire, including local job markets, freelance portals, and outsourcing companies. When searching for candidates, it's essential to understand each job position's unique characteristics. In particular, for roles such as game artists or technical artists, evaluating their portfolios is a critical step. Through this review process, their artistic abilities and compatibility with your project's aesthetic can be properly assessed.
Game Design Document Template and Examples
AAA teams, indie developers, and solo developers have completely different needs from their documentation. A completely optional section, but write your ideas now so you don’t forget them later. It’s important to think about how you are going to market your game, even before starting your development. It’s also important to know where the money to make the game is coming from. It covers all the sections in this guide, and also includes instructional starter content for every section - including accessibility. Feel free to use it in your studio, for your game, or in your classroom.
Example outline for a GDD
Think of it as a “living document” that you and the team will adjust as you go. You'd also be correct in assuming tools like Miro are practically perfect for outlining/charting/creating diagrams for illustrating gameplay mechanics and systems. You can even use visual features like boxes and bubbles in a program like Google Docs to rough out a clear diagram—there's no need to be fancy, so long as it is immediately readable to the reader/viewer. When it’s done right, a game design document gives you both a picture for reference and only the relevant puzzle pieces. As you work through iterations of a concept, the changes can get to the point where you forget the “why.” When you lose sight of the original purpose, the game design document can put you back on track.
How To Design, Manufacture, And Document A Hardware Product - Hackaday
How To Design, Manufacture, And Document A Hardware Product.
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Timeline & Development Milestones
A reader should be able to glance at your feature doc and walk away with a decent grasp of what you’re after. Keeping it high level and simple is more than enough to start, then you can click on the link and start spelling out your thoughts more in depth. In my case, I elected to only outline the macro-level loop – a prep stage where players prepare for the mission, combat where they are tested with their allies. For example, you might have one feature document for boulder traps, another for the player’s hookshot power-up, and a third to cover how the adaptive music system works. I often see websites sell GDD templates to cater for this supposed need for massive documents. By the way, as you’re reading this post, if you have any questions or issues implementing you can get free help in the #game-design channel in Funsmith Club Discord, or you can DM me there.
The Purpose of a GDD
A world can be as expansive as a wide-open fantasy landscape, or as minimalistic as a single room. Here's where you let your imagination run wild and set the scene for your character and level design. The imagery you add to your moodboard is what helps you express the look and feel of your game. Images can define your character style, concept art, colors, scenes, and more. Start by adding any existing material you have—this could include examples from previous projects, references from other games, or images you've saved as inspiration.
For example, if you’re building a world map, but you’re not sure where everything is going to go yet, the first version of your design should probably be one that allows you to easily move things around. There are a lot of different ways to show information and, a lot of the time, different types of data can be easier to understand and easier to work with when it’s presented in a particular way. For example, if you’re trying to balance the stats of different weapons in your game then designing them all on one “weapon balance” page makes a lot of sense, as you’ll be able to see how they compare at a glance. If you don’t know know what your design document is supposed to explain, it can be extremely difficult to make anything that’s actually useful. Even if you’re working on your game on your own, the one-page approach can be an extremely useful design tool. At this point, you might be thinking that the one-page approach simply involves using images and diagrams to communicate ideas because they usually work better than written text.
In this part, you provide designers and artists with instructions and detailed guidelines on what kind of art you want to see in the game. Of course, you should also leave room for creativity and make sure your team’s vision aligns with your expectations. Emphasize what mood and emotions you’re looking at as well — this shouldn’t be just a strict list of requirements. The key rule here is to trust your team and allow them to unleash their full potential. A GDD is necessary to organize the game development process and establish a shared understanding among team members. Conversely, game design wikis offer a more flexible and collaborative approach to game design documentation.
Your GDD can also be used as a sales tool, because it helps potential partners understand what’s unique about your game and evaluate its market potential. When you clearly outline the game’s mechanics, story, and visuals, it helps investors visualize the final product. We reached out to game designers and developers to weigh in on whether they use GDDs professionally or in their personal work. The most common advice was not to fall prey to any one format if it doesn't clearly communicate what you, the designer, are trying to.
With a clear vision of how game development should work, I run Whimsy Games, being responsible for the marketing and sales of our products and services. Here, you’ll need to mention plot-related aspects that somehow affect the characters and their storyline. Think of each character’s lore, skills, strengths and weaknesses, and personality.
I think a good doc also needs to have [the game's] core pillars very rigidly defined [in] explainers for folks to reference too, so devs are on the same page about what they're building." Whatever specific form your GDD takes, it should effectively, efficiently communicate your design and the core features you (or you and your team) will need to build. My personal favorite scenario is when game developers create a new, unique fantasy world for their games to take place in.
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