Game Design Documentation
Any game project will have these documents: 1) a Concept Document; 2) a Game Design Document, 3) a Level Design Document for each level; 4) a Mission Design Document for each mission in each level.
Over the years I have developed templates for these types of documents to use in my teaching. I also use them for myself. I have used other people’s document templates and changed them - added to them over the years, edited them when I discover that aspects don’t work when they are actually used, and also made up new sections as I discovered how to make these templates truly useful.
So far this project has
Concept Document: one page, this type of document should only be one page.
Game Design Document: 12 pages so far. This will grow as we work on the game as each section gets filled in and fleshed out. The game design document is never complete until the project is complete. It is a living document.
Jordan’s Story: Level Design Document: 22 pages so far. This will grow as we work on the level as each section gets filled in and fleshed out. The level design document is never complete until the project is complete. It is a living document. There are currently inconsistencies and aspects that will need to be resolved.
Eight Mission Design Documents: Jordan’s Story has 8 missions and each document has approximately 16 pages. Again these are living documents and will be complete when the game is released. Until then all of these documents will be updated and refined as the design process iterates.
This project also has a set of scripts. We wrote a Cinematic Script for each Mission (I haven’t counted the pages, it is a bunch) and then used AI to generate a Cell-by-Cell Script for each mission. These were used for the cards.
The cards for Jordan’s Story are going to undergo an iteration next. There were changes that were discovered during the playtesting process. It is pretty exciting to begin the refinement process for this first level. I am also looking forward to translating it into French to ready it for distribution in Canada. But that is a bit down the road. After that I would like to translate it to Spanish for distribution in Mexico.
