In Search of a Template for a Game Design Document

Note: this post is currently in a rough form while I collect reference material, draft, and revise.

Overview

I’ve had a long-time interest in Game Design & Development.  Over the years I’ve even made a few terrible ones that will probably never see the light of day.  Most recently, I took a couple of courses related to game design & development on Coursera: “Introduction to Game Design” by California Institute of the Arts and “Introduction to Game Development” by Michigan State University.  The latter was mostly focused on the practical: the nuts-and-bolts of setting up Unity and making a few simple games.  The former was mostly focused on the theoretical: the necessity of balancing difficulty to modulate player frustration and keep them interested.  We even made several paper-based games, the descriptions of which served as simple game design documents.  If/when I get around to it, I may digitize my notes from both courses and upload them here.

I’ve been interested in finding a decent template that I can use (and modify to expand, if necessary) for video games.  It’s been in the back of my head for some time; this post is my attempt to get it out of there so I don’t use so many intermittent cycles on it anymore.  I put together a template in Google Docs which I expect to modify as I gather more experience in game design and development.  The template can be found here:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eQxWKR2gOmO7z0pMX_lPT-POGzZmKqoccRG6HlyzBJs

 

To-Do List:

  • Find examples of Game Design Documents from Indies and Major Studios (particularly of games I know so that I can see how the documents relate to the final product)

Game Design Document Template Links:

References:

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