Homework Assignments

Game Design Document

So far your game exists as a couple of slides in a pitch deck, a few prototypes, and many ideas in your head. By writing a game design document, you will record those ideas in a structured way. This leads you to substantially flesh out the ideas concerning your game, and makes it possible for you to communicate your game design ideas to others.

The goal of a game design document is to describe and detail the gameplay of a game with a high degree of detail. This document communicates the vision for the game, how the game will function, gives a sense of what players will experience, and describes how players will interact with the game world.

For this assignment you will write a Game Design Document about the game concept you are developing this quarter. This is expected to be a document in the range of 10-20 pages, though there is no assigned page minimum or maximum. Your goal is to write a crisply written, concise, information-dense document that effectively communicates about your game. You are encouraged to include screenshots and/or photos from your two prototypes to illustrate various concepts in your game. 

You are welcome to share drafts of your document with other students, and to ask other students for help, to read early drafts, to provide spelling and grammar review, etc. However, the writing in the document is expected to be substantially your own, and you are expected to have intellectual ownership and control over the contents of the document.

The Game Design Document must have the following elements, or a description of why the element doesn't make sense for your game or interactive experience (for example a game may not have a story, etc.). For more detail on what belongs in these sections, you are encouraged to read Chapter 19 - The Game Design Document from Richard Rouse III, "Game Design: Theory and Practice" (this template was inspired by this chapter).

Title Section

  • Game title
  • Game genre
  • In-class category
  • Lead designer: Your name

Introduction/Overview

This section contains an executive summary of the entire game, and should not be longer than a single page. This section is intended to provide a quick overview of the game for a diverse set of audiences, such as greenlight judges, potential investors, potential team members, etc. This section should describe:

  • The game's most compelling elements
  • The element of the game that makes it novel, and distinguishes it from other similar games in its genre
  • A list of other similar games, and for each game, what elements are similar to your game
  • A summary of the game's story (if present)
  • The most central aspects of gameplay (core loop, game objectives, etc.)
  • A conclusion that emphasizes what is compelling to the player. Important: Why would someone want to play this game?

The answer to why someone would want to play your game should be given as a kind of argument about why your chosen audience will like the game. For example, saying that you like a specific kind of game isn't compelling, but saying that there is a large existing audience for puzzle games (perhaps citing sales statistics for recent puzzle games) would be. However, this argument should ideally not just be sales oriented, since the unique qualities of your game should ideally be compelling.

Game Mechanics

The most important section of the document. This section describes what players are allowed to do in the game, and the main rules for how the game is played. It ideally introduces player capabilities in the order the player will encounter them, and is sometimes viewed as a kind of rough draft of the user manual for the game. The detailed elements in the game mechanics section will vary from game to game, since games vary widely in their mechanics. However, some items that usually are present include:

  • How does the player navigate the game world?
  • What are the key actions (verbs) the player can perform? We strongly recommend using a table where each row describes a given player action.
  • What is the core loop? For example, in a platform game, the core loop is running and jumping.
  • What are the main elements that combine to create puzzles? Please provide an example of at least two puzzles, one easy puzzle and one hard puzzle. Use of diagrams to pictorially represent puzzle actions is recommended.
  • How will players see the world (camera view, HUD)?

Chapter 19 of Rouse has significantly more detail on the content that might go in this section.

Use of one or more diagrams to describe game mechanics is strongly recommended. Diagrams could include: depictions of state changes in the game (before/after a specific mechanic is used), relationships between multiple subsystems, a description of the core loop, and state transition diagrams between various player states.

Control Scheme

A description of which keys/buttons/triggers/thumbsticks/etc. provide which inputs to your game.

This should take the form of a pictorial representation of a keyboard, game controller, custom/alternate controller, etc., with labels indicating the function of each key/button/trigger/etc.

As needed, additional descriptive text can explain non-obvious aspects of the control scheme. For example, using a thumbstick to control a camera or make an avatar move is standard (and hence obvious), and does not need additional explanation.

Artificial Intelligence (or Game World)

This section describes how the world and its inhabitants reacts to player actions. As appropriate, it contains sections on:

  • How do NPCs in the world behave? How do they react in specific situations? Use of diagrams is recommended. For example, consider using a state transition diagram to describe the various states an NPC AI can be in, and the actions that take the NPC from one state to another.
  • For super complex AI (such as an automated opponent in a strategy game), what are the design goals for the AI? (In this case, a full specification would be too complex).
  • How do elements in the game world react to the player?

Game Elements

The game mechanics section describes the behavior of the game in a manner that is independent of the specific characters, items, weapons, objects/mechanism that are in the game. This section fills in all of that detail, and provides descriptions on all of the specific characters, specific items, specific weapons, etc. the player will encounter.

Since there is often regularity in this information, use of tables or bulleted lists is recommended, one each for characters, items, objects/mechanisms. Each row/bullet should describe a given character/item/object/etc.

  • Characters
    • All of the enemies players will battle
    • Different NPCs they might meet, and their personalities
    • Different kinds of AIs in the game
  • Items
    • Anything the player can pick up or manipulate in the game.
    • Weapons, items that appear in inventory
    • A description of the behavior of these items. How do they work? What benefits/drawbacks do they have?
  • Objects/Mechanisms
    • Items that appear in the game, but are not AI driven, and players can't pick them up.
    • Doors, switches, puzzle elements, traps, etc.

Very often the use of tables (perhaps linked to a spreadsheet model) is the best way of communicating the characteristics of items and objects/mechanisms.

Story Overview

This section provides a "big picture" summary of the story/narrative that will unfold as the game progresses. This section is not intended to provide a lot of detail on the story, as this will be found in a separate story document. This section should be a couple of pages, maximum, and is inteded to provide enough story to give context on the game elements and the progression systems.

Game Progression

A detailed description of how the game unfolds over time. Most elements of the game's design that vary over time should be detailed in this section. Typical elements include:

  • Details on resource systems
  • The costs of various resources over time
  • Conversion rates for resources (and how they change over time)
  • The rate at which players receive various resources as rewards
  • Drop tables (e.g., when killing a monster, what kind of loot is provided to the player (is "dropped" by the monster when it falls))
  • Leveling tables (at what XP levels does the player go to a new level)
  • Investment systems (if any)
  • How does the difficulty of puzzles increase over time (and how do you design puzzles for increasing difficulty).
  • How does the game increase in difficulty/challenge over time?
  • What keeps the game interesting or engaging after the first 10-15 minutes of play?

If you find yourself thinking, "my game doesn't have any real progression to it," then this typically means the design of your game is lacking, and your game will not be interesting after a short period of time. Sometimes round-based pvp competition games appear to not have any need for a progression scheme. However, even in these games there is usually some form of tournament system, or unlocking of playable characters. As well, these games typically have significant depth of gameplay that leads to a deepening of strategy over time, and an active metagame as people discover these strategies.

Visual Art Direction

Please provide a description, including some examples of reference art, that capture your current thinking about the visual art direction for your game.

Submission Instructions

Your completed Game Design Document is placed in the subfolder titled, "170 Game Design Documents" located in the shared class Google Drive folder. Final documents should be in either PDF or Google Doc format. We are not able to read documents in Pages format.

Final documents are expected to be free of grammar and spelling errors, and will be returned for revision (with penalty) if the writing does not meet university (e.g., C2 standard) writing levels.