Game Design Document: an idea for a basic model

If you want to work with game design, you've probably heard about a Game Design Document (or a GDD). If you already work with game design, you've probably developed many documents of this kind. Anyway, in this post I want to introduce a very simple template to help beginners out in the exercise of putting a gaming idea on paper.

First point to discuss: think small in your first projects. It’s not a bad thing to think like this in the gaming area. Triple A games usually have GDD documents with hundreds of pages, thousands of details etc. Focus on creating a hyper-casual game; try to establish one core mechanic, a simple narrative, and a minimalist aesthetic. Try to create the concept and main ideas in a sketchbook (yes, I suggest using paper! Works a lot for me) and, then, organize these thoughts in an objective structure. I like to use the following model of GDD for simple games:



I have used this model a lot in my classes and you can download it by clicking here. If you want to share the results or just discuss some ideas, send me an e-mail! vincevader@gmail.com 

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