Design Documents
A Game Design Document (GDD) defines everything in your game - characters, levels, colour schemes, the interface, sounds, everything. It is, potentially, a large, intimidating document, even for a small game. The GDD is not, however, a monolith of a document that has to be completed before anything else is. That would go against the process of iterative design. Instead the GDD will develop over time as the game develops.
Game Bibles
Before looking at what a GDD is it is worth talking about something it isn’t. A GDD is not a game bible. A game bible describes the setting of a game, the world the game takes place in, its people, its history. It also covers rules about how the game world works - does it have magic? how does magic work? Does it have talking animals? Aliens? Anything about how the world works rather than how the game works belongs in a game bible rather than the GDD. Of course there will be times when the GDD says something like “because the world has magic and magic works this way the game will let players cast spells and the spells will work like this”, but in general the GDD is focused on the game where the game bible is focused on the setting.
The main purpose of a game bible is to ensure that everyone working on the game is able to keep the world consistent. Different team members working on different levels can check with the game bible to ensure they don’t contradict each other. A small team working closely together on a small game may not need a game bible. A large team working on an abstract puzzle game may not need one either.
Game Design Document
There are as many approaches to creating a GDD as there are game designers and then some. There is no standard approach. The approach described here comes from Scott Rogers’ “Level Up! The Guide To Great Video Game Design” John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2014.
Scott Rogers suggest a four step approach.
- The One-Sheet
- The Ten Pager
- The Beat Chart
- The Game Design Document Each of these builds incrementally on the previous steps.