It’s times like these where having a compass is vital.Īs 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. You can map out things like plot, and characters, and locations, and at a certain point you can decide the game is big enough.Īs you work through something, it’s easy to get caught up in it and forget why you’re doing it in the first place. You can set some parameters to keep the project manageable. The game design document helps you form a finite scope for your game. More like Reign of Fire (great movie, how has a great game not been made from that concept yet?)…
Learn to Create Your First Game Doc Reign in the Scope Things like the dragon language and the animations for the dragons he’ll fight would be more important to the game. If the core concept of your game is “A hero with dragon blood, who can speak the dragon language, fights undead and the returning dragon scourge to save his home in a medieval time period” you can return to that idea and say “ok, space dragons and castle destruction are cool ideas, but they aren’t a core part of the game I’m trying to build.” If you find too many ideas creeping into your game, you can go back to the game design document and refocus. Are we saying that you should set some limits? Well, only if you want to finish your game….Ī game design document acts like both an anchor and a compass. And lay waste to the castles and temples and mountains and forests in the game.”Īll of a sudden you have a very different game.Īre we saying you shouldn’t let your imagination run wild? Absolutely not. Imagine Skyrim–“there should be dragons!” could quickly become “there should be dragons and the player should be able to ride them!”Īnd that could quickly become “there should be dragons and the player should be able to ride them and fight other dragons in the air. 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. The plot, the characters, the core concepts, the game mechanics, etc.Ī game design document can be a lot of work to iron out, but you’ll find that the upfront effort can be worth it in the long run, especially for complicated concepts. The game design document includes way more than just the setting. Instead of having ten different versions of a superweapon planet, the document would show that it’s an artificially-created ring planet. It is the kind of document that will inform every decision your team makes. It’s a document that should be thorough enough and specific enough to let a team of people build a cohesive, consistent game. This exposes one of the primary functions of a game design document–it acts like a guide to keeping everyone on your team on the same page. 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.Īnd probably not one of them would have made the super-weapon planet a Halo. The simplified version of the game is easy to understand, but hardly covers everything a game developer would need to know about the game. “Humans are on the frontier of space and have to fight aliens for the control of an ancient super-weapon planet that could bring about total annihilation for organic life.” Instead of a detailed breakdown, you describe it more like this: Your team sounds like it can get away without a game design document.īut let’s say you’re working on a game like Halo.Īll of a sudden, the concept gets way too complicated to try and keep in your head. You don’t have to explain the game to anyone because your team already knows the details as well as you. Since the game is so simple, you don’t need to bring on any new help. You and your teamwork in the same space all the time, and you’re constantly communicating any small changes to each other. It’s small enough, and you know it well enough, that every detail can be safely contained in your brain. If you and your team are building a simple game, you could probably get away with storing the concept in your head.
Start with the gameplay and detail how the sequence of play is presented 2.2.
A summary of the game’s story, focusing on gameplay 1.6.
#Map designer game software
Intended Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating 1.5.
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