Game Design Document Template

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

 

Thanks.

 

No problem goat

 

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!

 

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?.

 

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.

 

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

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.

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

Thank you for the heads up.

 

er thanks for the template.

 

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

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

 

Nice work! Very thanks!

 

Using it now, thanks for your hard work

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

Nice, will come in handy for sure

 

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.

 

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.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1axeeBWp683LPU8gCBQQqmquHMYHuG3uhNTN0LjSJBKk/edit?usp=sharing

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.

 

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

 

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 Template.odt

-Raiden

 

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

 

Very handy, thanks!

 

Thanks

 

Thanks for saving My life

 

@ironbellystudios also provides a pretty solid template on their site as well:

http://ironbellystudios.com/gdd-template/

 

This is fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to put this together and share it.

 

Thank you guys for providing all the examples!

 

Thank you so much!

 

Thanks for your effort. This is amazing. Happy making games good people

 

Thanks!

 

Thank a lot guz......

 

Source link of different kinds of game design document templates which is good for all of them as some friend say thanks for it. Very few website have such opportunity regarding more different kinds of documents.

 

Wow thank you so much! I like so many ideas in this project. Best,
Ugo

 

I have seen this post a couple of years a go. Could any Mod, please pin it so nobody can loose it?

 

Thank you so much!

 

Thank you so much, Dear...

 

Thank you very much!! So kind!

 

Thanks so much! It's very helpful!!

 

Thank you

 

Here is a template for Scrivener 3 I made up. Made using macOS no idea if it works under Windows. Mind is direct copy from this, so always make it yourself.

https://github.com/thylaxene/Scrivener-3-GDD-Template

 

Thanks, guys!!!

 

thanks!!

 

I think an important part of this phase of development is to also put up some boundaries, barriers, draw the line, in terms of what the game will NOT be, which aspects of Unity's `possibilities` will not be used, and put some real hard limits on it, because otherwise the sheer potential of "its possible so lets do it" starts to creep in and chew up tons of time and you lose direction and can't stay focused.

 

I have to be honest and say that I tend to just jump straight in and start developing, but having looked at your template,

I am going to start using this. It seems, at first glance, that this could make my projects a lot more structured which I hope will stop me leading myself down so many blind alleys, and get me to the finush line, (release day) a lot faster.

Thanks for sharing. I appreciate it.

 

Guys, I highly recommend Nuclino, I'm in love with this app.

I was searching for a long time a nice tool to make my game project's docs and I was not liking the idea of having (again) everything in text documents.

Nuclino has amazing features like Clusters/Sub-Clusters, which serves as topics and sub-topics, but in steroids, Items, which is like items inside a topic, quoting Clusters/Items/etc - which automatic link to it and if you rename them, it will auto-rename in the other places they were quoted too, media embedding (from image to stuff like draw.io docs, lucidchart, youtube), tables editing, etc.

It also creates these very nice charts showing every item and clusters in your document and how they relate to each other which is quite pleasing to see it "growing":

 

Thanks

 

Hey thanks a lot, much appreciated!

 

Thanks for Sharing Man.

 

Thanks!

 

Thank you very much