# <Game title>

> **Owner:** <one name>
> **Last real edit:** <date>
> **Status:** exploring / in production / locked
>
> If the date above is more than a month old, treat everything below as a
> guess rather than a decision.

---

## 1. The pitch

One paragraph. What the player does, who they are, and why anyone would care.
If it takes more than a paragraph, the game is not decided yet — that is fine,
but say so in Status rather than padding this section.

## 2. Pillars

Three, at most. A pillar is something you would cancel a good feature to
protect. "Fun" is not a pillar. "Every fight is survivable without combat" is.

1.
2.
3.

## 3. The loop

What the player does for thirty seconds, for ten minutes, and for ten hours.
Write all three. Most projects have one of them clear and the other two
missing, and the missing ones are where the game falls apart.

- **Thirty seconds:**
- **Ten minutes:**
- **Ten hours:**

## 4. The player

Who is this for, and what do they already know how to do? Name a game they
have played. Vagueness here shows up later as tutorials nobody needed and
mechanics nobody understood.

## 5. World and tone

Place, period, mood. Two or three reference works — a film, a game, a book —
do more here than a page of adjectives, because everyone on the team can
actually go and look at them.

## 6. Narrative

The part that usually gets written last and suffers for it.

- **Shape:** linear, branching, hub-and-spoke, or systemic. Say which.
- **Who tells it:** cutscenes, in-world dialogue, environment, documents, systems.
- **What the player changes:** if the answer is "nothing", that is a valid
  choice, but write it down so nobody builds a choice system for it.
- **Where it lives:** the tool and the file format. Narrative that lives only
  in a document goes stale the week production starts.

## 7. Systems

One heading per system. For each: what it is for, what the player sees, and
what it needs from other systems. Cut any system you cannot connect to a pillar.

## 8. Content inventory

The number that decides your schedule. Levels, characters, dialogue lines,
items, cutscenes, music tracks. Estimate badly and early rather than
accurately and late.

| Kind | Count | Who makes it | Done |
|---|---|---|---|
|  |  |  |  |

## 9. Art and audio direction

What it looks like and sounds like, in terms someone could act on. References
again, not adjectives.

## 10. Technical

Engine, target platforms, minimum spec, anything unusual you are relying on.
Note the things that would be expensive to change later — save format, input
model, localisation — because those are the ones that get decided by accident.

## 11. Out of scope

The most useful section in the document, and the one most often missing.
List what this game is **not** doing. Multiplayer, mod support, a second
language, a crafting system. Every entry here is an argument you only have once.

## 12. Risks

What could sink this, and what you would do about it. Be specific enough to be
uncomfortable. "Scope" is not a risk; "the narrative branches faster than one
writer can fill them" is.

---

*Template from [yarndraft.com](https://yarndraft.com/guides/game-design-document/).
Free to use, change and delete from. Delete more than you add.*