Been on Unity for ages, but finally have started posting on the website. I currently have around 30-40 personal game design documents floating around, other than the feedback I have been getting from some professionals I would be interested in your feedback as well.
The only problem is that I am not sure what sort of format you would like, Would you like me to link to google docs drive, paste the whole thing on here, sum it up then add detail to the questions that arise?
I have also seen a lot of people asking for prototypes of games that they have posted on here. As it currently stands I am working and traveling long hours and have little time for myself to make these prototypes, and then if I some of these games are quite ambitious and I would struggle to make them.
Anyway look forward to posting my first one soon, just as soon as some people suggest ways of doing it.
I would suggest you post summaries, and then either link to more detail (in Google Docs or whatever), or just answer questions as they come up.
People are busy and generally don’t have the time to read a long design document, so a summary hitting the highlights will probably get the best response.
To add onto what Joe wrote, you’ll get the best response if you post 1-2 short paragraphs (half a screen of text at most) or – better yet – a single sentence followed by 3-5 bullet points.
How to write an Elevator Pitch is a good article on short pitches for boardgames, but it applies as well to video games.
You can link to something slightly bigger (a few pages max). For templates, look at the huge database on gamepitches.com: http://www.gamepitches.com/game-designs/. Don’t bother linking to a design document. Design docs are for internal developer use, not external feedback.
+1 to what @TonyLi said. And @OP, folks don’t get too excited round these parts by random game ideas. Because, they’ve realized that ideas are cheap and only rarely have value in and of themselves. Meaning, of the 30-40 game ideas, maybe one is something kind of unique. The rest are mostly variants that boil down to execution, and as you stated, even you can’t be bothered to execute them.
We do however, enjoy a good design discussion!
Gigi
I’d be one of the ones asking for a prototype early on in the process. Games are about being played, and if you can’t play a game, its difficult to judge how well it will work.
If you have the time to complete 40 drafts, but not to write a single line of code, then why not shift over to creative writing? Same general principles apply. You could be knocking out short stories or even novels.
Example
Hi everyone! My name is El Maxo, and I had an idea for a game. I don’t know if it’s any fun, so I wanted to get some feedback on it.
The game is a side-scrolling fruit-thrower where the main character is a princess who has a rocket-propelled ballgown.* She’s been kidnapped the dreaded bandit, Henkh Mann. However, as a young girl, she was taught how to defend herself with a wide variety of pieces of fruit. She has to battle her way out of Henkh Mann’s Evil Castle using her wits, and a constantly-dwindling supply of fruit.
I made a quick mechanical demo here that I also posted in the Game Design Thread - the princess is the pink cube, the fruit are yellow cubes, and the henchmen are indigo cubes.
What can I improve about this idea to make it more fun?
*: I’m not abandoning Sara the Shieldmage for this idea, but the more I think about it, the more this seems like an awesome idea.
1st is that I do coding for a living, don’t really enjoy doing, and want to move more onto the design side of things.
2nd is that I do a lot of bus traveling at the moment, while traveling I do my writing on my phone.
If you really hook people with your short elevator pitch, they just might read a slightly longer treatment document (a few pages max) and give feedback on sketches and concept art. To get any feedback beyond that on an online forum you probably do need some kind of playable prototype.
Face-to-face, however, you can often skip the coding and initially prototype it like a boardgame. Take, for example, Plants vs. Zombies. Draw the units (zombies, sunflowers, wall-nuts, etc.) on post-it notes. Draw a couple rows on a whiteboard, and stick the post-its on them. This has worked well for me in the past. You can iterate and refine ideas really fast before writing a single line of code. I wonder if there’s a good way to replicate this online.
