How to Write a Game Design Document GDD

Table Of Content

• Here is a List of Real Game Design Document Examples:
• Join the Funsmith Tavern to get exclusive game dev tips that I don’t share anywhere else
• Kevuru Games Expertise in Level Design Documentation
• High Level Vision
• 🎮 Choosing the Right HTML5 Game Engine: A Guide for Developers 🚀
• Various Formats for Game Design Documents
• Page 1: Introduction to the TeamPage

You can use some of our recommended free or low-cost art tools here to rough out simple 2D maps. There are often a lot of implicit ideas and feelings related to your game, which seem very obvious and clear to you. They are also probably clear to any member of the team that has been around for a long time and has been part of many conversations that strengthened the game vision. For example for the initial release of Curious Expedition 1 we took the drastic step of removing our whole combat mechanic, which we had prototyped for some months. We realized that it was not part of the core experience that we had laid out when starting the project and focused on getting the travel mechanics right instead.

Here is a List of Real Game Design Document Examples:

Some people love them, while others insist that they are obsolete and have been for some time. Or it might be because other people are going to work on your game with you, and you need a way to show them what the game should or should not be like. Call of Duty is geared towards a wider audience who enjoy high-octane first-person shooters.

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Yet as distributed teams and multi-studio development are becoming increasingly common, the need for centralized game documentation is not going away. Rather than doing away with GDDs altogether, the documentation process can be adapted to support the creative, iterative, and collaborative process of game development. That said, you should mention the characters and describe the relationship between them, the game’s setting, and how the story affects the gameplay. Make it brief yet informative — don’t forget the overall document length. If someone else can easily understand your game by reading your GDD then, even if you’re working alone, your design document will be much easier to work with and much more helpful to you as you build your project. Or, for a more practical approach, your design document might explain exactly how each of the systems, mechanics and features of your game are supposed to work.

Kevuru Games Expertise in Level Design Documentation

Provide short descriptions of their backgrounds, motivations, and roles in the story. Flesh out the game world by describing the game’s setting, key locations, history, and lore. Laying out a clear vision in your GDD can also help the team stay motivated and focused.

With Sidekick, you can generate ideas for characters and plot points, instantly generate descriptions and dialogue, get suggestions for more concise or engaging language, and much more. But it doesn't mean that game design documentation has become obsolete – it has merely evolved. There is no single, agreed-upon way to make a video game design document — because no two games are the same. Each GDD needs to serve the requirements of the game it represents, so there’s no single template that will fit the needs of every game. It’s also important to add more than just details for the design and development teams. A GDD should include information about the intended audience, gameplay, characters, story, user interface, and more.

Because as you saw with the professional GDD examples, very few games end up looking just the way they were described in the first draft design. Next, describe the various objectives players will encounter within each level. These could be things like puzzles, combat encounters, or collectibles. Discuss any environmental hazards or obstacles players must overcome, and explain how those elements contribute to the game’s overall challenge and pacing.

Key Components of a Game Design Document

The Original 'Deus Ex' Design Document Is Fascinating Reading - VICE

The Original 'Deus Ex' Design Document Is Fascinating Reading.

Posted: Mon, 14 Nov 2016 08:00:00 GMT [source]

After all even though writing a document might be cheaper than putting a feature through the whole code & art pipeline, it is still nowhere free and needs to yield benefits to be worth the time expense for creating it. Having written your shared team goals and vision is a great help for onboarding new team members. This can even be important after big sections of the game are already playable.

You’re putting together a strategy guide that everyone on your team can follow. 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. Making games for a living is an incredibly rewarding career, but it’s hard to break in unless you have insider knowledge.

If you need to persuade other people to join or invest in your project, having a solid GDD will be a valuable tool. When you can present a well-organized, detailed GDD, it builds trust that you’re a “professional.” And it gives stakeholders confidence that you’ve thought everything through. So it’s a great way to confidence in your ability to deliver the game successfully.

However, for larger and more complex games, as well as projects involving multiple team members or external stakeholders, a GDD becomes increasingly important to ensure alignment, communication, and project management. The GDD’s Technical Requirements section furnishes specifics on necessary hardware, software, engine requirements, and any required third-party software, plugins, or middleware for the project. This section ensures that the development team possesses a comprehensive understanding of the technical specifications needed to develop and execute the game. Typical hardware requirements in a game design document encompass supported platforms like PC, console, mobile devices, and any necessary hardware components crucial for the game’s intended functionality. Traditionally, GDDs have been detailed, 100+ page documents, which tried to explain every detail of the game up front.

Put simply, the process of documenting your design can be an important part of the design process itself. Put simply, it’s the tool that you’ll use to manage and develop the concept of what your game is, how it’s supposed to work and how it will be built. Or is it a game like Outlast in which the main character needs to find crucial information in an ‘abandoned’ hospital?

Nuclino also comes with an AI-powered assistant called Sidekick that can help game designers with various aspects of the creative process. However — and I cannot emphasize this enough — the most valuable part of writing docs is the chance to boil down all of your wild ideas into the essential parts you need to actually START the game development process. In this post, I’ll show you a much more efficient and practical way to put together a game design document that’s actually functional. I will also provide you with usable templates and a list of full game design document examples from famous games. Hopefully, this article has helped you to think about how a game design document is, essentially, a communication tool for your ideas.

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. Deciding exactly what it is you’re trying to design can be difficult however, to make it a little easier, try to think specifically about the problem you’re trying to solve. 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. Using only a single page to communicate your design can work well for a few reasons.

Start with a short overview of the plot, calling out the main story beats, and any branching paths or player choices that would impact the narrative. If you’re an aspiring game designer, you’ve probably heard about the importance of a Game Design Document (GDD). It oulines everything from the story to the game mechanics, and can even include your thoughts about art style, game economy, and more. Typically, the lead game designer drafts the initial versions of a GDD. They are responsible for synthesizing, organizing, and filtering ideas to create a cohesive vision that aligns with the project’s overall vision.

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. If you’re ready to go and you’re doing it all on your own – then fine, feel free to dive in and explore for a bit. However, if you’re going to work with even one other person or spend more than a month on your idea, then jumping straight into execution is a recipe for disaster.