How to Write Game Design Document

A concept document is a brief and concise description of the concept of the game, that is, the most concise document that talks about what the game will be like, what it will be interesting for and how it should look after development.

A concept document is essential for the game designer, the development team, and the publisher. The first two need it to keep the main course of their thoughts and not lose the game’s vision, to limit the scope of development positively. In addition, the concept document is interesting to the publisher because it briefly tells about the future game. Therefore the publisher can assess whether he should take on this project or not.

Importance of Mobile Game Design Document Template

The scope of game design documentation depends solely on the size of the project. For a simple hyper-casual game, a one page game design document might suffice. But if you have taken on the implementation of something more global, with a large number of levels, storylines, features, and screens, the document can significantly increase. It is important to describe all the features of the game that are important for both users and those who will do it – the main gameplay, user interface, concepts, improvements, etc. Game documentation is also required in 3D modeling for games. Usually, those who do this professionally strictly follow all the criteria and requirements we will describe in this article and know how to write a game design document.

Bad game development documentation does not answer the main questions: What? Why? and Where? After reading the documentation, the game project team involved in the implementation should not have global questions like how to make a game design document that the client needs.

How to Make a Game Design Document – Step by Step

The standard game documentation of the concept document is as follows:

1. Genre and Audience – indicates the genre, the game’s intended audience, and the presence of licensed material or restrictive content and game elements.
2. The game’s main features (USP) is a list of detailed technical descriptions that the players will be interested in and for which they will pay money. It is best if the game has One Main Feature.
3. Game Mechanic – the most complete and, at the same time, generalized (without unnecessary details) description of the entire gameplay. It is necessary to answer questions about what the player should do, how he should do it, and, finally, answer the question: “What will the player be interested in each of these actions?” (A similar question is worth asking for every major feature of the game.)
4. At this point, it is worth touching on the plot, not just the background of events but the storylines or important elements in the game. A huge amount of literary material in this paragraph will not interest anyone.
5. System requirements – here, you need to evaluate what requirements the game will impose on the hardware and write out their minimum and maximum (recommended) in game limits.
6. Development timeline and budget – at this point, you need to calculate how much the work on the project will cost and how much time will be spent on them, and then write out the resulting values depending on your settings.

Game Design Documentation – Basis

Be prepared that the documentation will change with each update of the game. Some processes will be optimized, new features and characters will appear, the ways of presenting information will change, etc. Each project is individual, but conditionally it can be divided into headings.

A correct mobile game design document template must meet the following requirements:

• It has a literate language.
• Objectivity, consistency, accuracy, lack of a ton of literary descriptions.
• A clear document structure and description of the game, without a hash.
• Good readable text formatting.

Table of contents

The first page usually describes the hierarchy and the game starts of the project. After that, there are links to all important files and sections, which greatly simplifies the search for information about a particular game.

Storytelling

As mentioned above, a game design document is not a game script. However, in the section about the plot, you do not need to prescribe the game world’s history. But it is enough to describe the setting and important features or moments around which the game events will revolve. Also, in this section, you can describe the main characters and the path they will take – something like a synopsis for the film as a game description.

Introduction

The introduction should contain a brief description of the game, it’s positioning, basic mechanics, setting, reference point, and target audience – everything that will help you understand how the creator sees the future product from the first page. A brief description of the project is also written: name, platform, and technologies used.

Gameplay

The core gameplay with all its mechanics and ways of interacting with the player. In this section, the development team should give a clear and detailed description of the gameplay. As well as the gameplay with all its mechanics and ways of interacting with the player.

Interface

It is important not to litter the screen with unnecessary information at this point. Instead, it is necessary to give the user the required data, so they do not distract from the gameplay. This point of the game design document is written in collaboration with the art team.

Conclusion

Every detail in the game overview document is important if you want your team members to understand how you see the game. Therefore, you must describe everything as accurately and in detail as possible. Even if you are creating a game alone and have untested ideas, still make a document – this way, you will more clearly see how the project develops and how to write game design document.