Game Design Document Template

News & General Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

Me and a few others have put together a GDD template for you all to use. Feel free to use it just give credit to those who made it happen.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-I08qX76DgSFyN1ByIGtPuqXh7bVKraHcNIA25tpAzE/edit?usp=sharing

All you need to do is go to file → Make copy. Then it is yours.

Have a great day,

  • HeadClot
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2

Thanks.

3

No problem goat :slight_smile:

4

Cool! Thats a very good idea to provide some sort of “open source GDD”. Did you have a chance to read the book “Level Up” by Scott Rogers? I really like the way he approaches GDDs because they make you think of so many fundamental things. Could be very worthwhile to incorporate his ideas into this GDD as well!

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5

I have a couple of questions, most of it is pretty self explainatory, but there are some less obvious parts, for instance, project description (both brief and descriptive), what aspect of the project is to be described?, we already have a game mechanics part above it (and below it), so I don’t know about that.

Next, what sets this game apart?, apart from what?, other games of the same/similar genre and/or mechanics?.

6

I recently made up a GDD based on this example: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ct5-qyUZC9cAKn-iLUgtOczDkERmPzNNwPLDfT9Hgjs/preview
This and yours are very similar, but this one provides some examples which is a great help for single-person projects and non-designers having to put their GDDs together.

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7

Funny Enough - I have not read that book yet really should. Going to order it when I can. :slight_smile:

OK, let me answer your questions real quick -

Project Description (Brief and Detailed) are for if you were going to a group of executives, A Publisher or Kickstarter. I should have put more info in there. Sorry about that. :slight_smile:

As for what set this game apart - I view it as games within that genre with similar mechanics (If any).

I will need to check that out :slight_smile:

Thank you for the heads up.

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er thanks for the template.

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So - I am going to push out another version of the document today or early tomorrow :slight_smile:

I was missing somethings in this release. Example - UI, Target Audience, Target Rating, etc.

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Nice work! Very thanks!

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Using it now, thanks for your hard work :slight_smile:

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I made own GDD which is about 15 pages. Is this enough?

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It’s enough for college credit. Whether it’s enough for a project is more of a matter of how important it is for the team, which for most small teams is usually not important at all.

14

Thanks, this looks like a great start for game design.

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Nice, will come in handy for sure

16

I have a suggestion for the GDD - it may make more sense to use Page Breaks (Ctrl+Enter in Google Docs) to separate your sections rather than manually spacing with newlines (since you have to add and remove newlines as you edit). That said, thanks for the GDD! It’ll be very helpful for me.

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17

I reformatted it so that it’s a bit easier to use. All of the content is exactly the same, it’s just a bit more user-friendly.

EDIT: While it’s great that, more than two years later, people are still wanting to use this, could people please stop asking for edit access? File->Make a Copy or File->Download. If you want to make changes, do it to your own version, not the version that needs to stay generic.

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18

This is wonderful. I’ll use it for an interview if you don’t mind (They expect me to do a game) Thanks!

19

Since I’ve seen a couple versions in this post, I thought I would go ahead and post a basic GDD i found available online:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96068012/GDD%20Template.odt

-Raiden

20

I converted one of the online templates into a Scrivener Game Design Document Template in case anyone enjoys that program. Here’s the link…

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ub8tsevbow69d91/GDD_Scrivener_Template.scrivx?dl=0

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