Check out this series of articles to learn everything there is to know about game design documents.
Back in 2020, an Italian Game and Level Designer Simone Cicchetti had published a great 3-part article where he shared a lot of practical tips on technical Game Design Documentation. In this series, Simone discussed 3 golden rules of design documents, explained how to make everything more visually appealing and memorable, and talked about the usage of bullet points and spreadsheets in order to simplify your workflow.
The 3-part series, published over at Game Developer aims to put game developers into the right mindset and explain the nuances of design documents. The entire series can be accessed here, here, and here.
"I’ve been studying Game and Level Design for the last 3 years at AIV (Italian Videogame Academy) and obviously a big chunk of the school program has been about Documentation – during this time I had the chance to learn the theory behind writing a Document, practice it and face all the problems that come with it," comments Simone. Last year my Game Design teacher asked me to hold a Workshop about Technical Documentation, and while writing my script I started to notice how everything that I wanted to tell the students could be summarized in some Golden Rules; not only that, but I started to realize that good documentation writing is not about practical skills – it’s about having the right mindset."
Right now, Simone is working as a Level Designer on ISO – a photography video game set on a post-human planet Earth. In this game, you will need to track down the local animals and document their habits with your photo camera, while following the rules of composition to get a better rating. You'll also be able to express your creativity using lighting, focus, and filters to personalize your photos and make them unique. You can learn more about the upcoming game here.
Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.