Short Game Design Documents

A short game design document will help us overcome writers’ block. A well-structured, short design document can help us finish our game. The design document for the Dungeon Crawler example in this game is in Design a Dungeon Crawler.

Let’s start with something that can help defeat writer’s block: making notes.

Make a note of each idea

As we play and create games, we’ll find ourselves brimming with ideas. Inspiration often hits at the least convenient moment: in the shower, at work, or while we’re trying to sleep. Keep a notepad, physical or virtual, always handy. When ideas pop into your brain, jot them down. You only need enough to remember what you were thinking about. “Pong, but with lasers” is a memorable note. “Metaphysical Monsters” is a great title but probably needs a little more commentary to remember what it means when you look back on your notes.

Use whatever note-taking system you like. From EMACS Org Mode to Evernote, Google Keep to Microsoft OneNote, there are plenty of note-taking systems to try. It doesn’t matter what platform we use. Even a pad of paper and pen is fine.

It’s a good idea to keep notes organized by game idea. A top-level note with the basic game idea and notes underneath for when we think of features is a good model. Consider how important they are to the basic game idea. For example, is our idea a core concept of the game or a fun visual effect to accompany another idea?

When we feel the urge to create something but aren’t sure what, we can open the corpus of notes and find something that sounds fun to write. Game idea notes aren’t a design document or plan. You’ll often find that you can combine ideas from different sets of notes—many of the more interesting game ideas start by pondering the combination of a few genres or ideas. Before turning notes into a design plan, let’s consider what our plan should accomplish.

Why we need a design document

A design document serves several purposes:

• It distills the essence of the game we want to make into an describable target.

• Compiling our notes into a more formalized document makes our brain ponder how the game actually works, rather than just a conceptual end-product.

• Creating a design document helps us determine which features are essential and which are optional.

• A well-structured design document breaks tasks into bite-sized chunks. So, when we find time to ...