Arctic Flower

I’m person who likes to plan things out before starting something. It’s pretty useful skill in various things including art and yes, game design. Why planning is important? And when it’s needed and when it’s rather useless? How to plan? I’m going to cover these topics in this article about planning when developing games.

General planning before starting project

Before starting to code or draw anything, it’s very important to generate even somekind plan about what kind game you are going to make and what player can do in game. Some small games may be done completely extemporise but when developing sligthly bigger games it’s needed. I usually start by writing down the very basic idea of gameplay and theme to paper. After that I write more about basic features and moving towards smaller features. In this stage, you don’t need to write everything down, just core mechanics and features straighly connected to them. Leave all little graphic effects out for now. They come later. After you have somekind general plan, you can produce little prototype to test basic ideas. If concept works, you can start extend your plan for more details.

Advances of planning

Planning is very important because it keeps you in track about what you have to do. Often I get discouraged when I don’t exactly know what I should add next to my game. This can be avoided by good planning. I often make list of things what I have to make. First there are bigger and more important features and after them come little details and fixes and improvements for more important features. Good planning also helps you to come up new features and choosing right of them to your game. Often if you work completely extemporise, you get some “cool” ideas which later turn out to be completely out of the place. To avoid these kind accidents it’s recommended to write also down every feature idea and then ponder each of them throught before adding them to the to-do list. You should atleast think how they affect to the general gameplay, how they enhance the playing experience and do they complicate things too much. One of the most important advances of planning is that it keeps my motivation up. I can clearly see how much I have advanced and that game is advancing steadily.

Dangers of planning

Eventhough planning is generally good thing and I recommend to plan every project you have, there is some things you should notice and avoid. Eventhough planning helps to keep in right track and helps to figure the features which should be added to the game, do not take it literally always. You may find some interesting features to add and notice that certain features you have planned won’t work so well in real game. Feel free to develop your plan along the game. Plan should affect to the game, but it works another wat too. Your game should also affect to the plan because many ideas work well in paper but poorly in game itself. Another danger of plans is over planning. At the start of the project, don’t plan everything. Your plan probably will change when you advance with project and it can be just waste of time to plan everything from start. It can also be little discouraging to start project when you have 127 pages text about everything. I myself prefer this kind of order

1. Plan general idea and gameplay
2. Plan details and enhancements for core mechanics
3. Plan the graphical look and effects
4. Plan story and events

Why I recommend this order is because by planning them individually, you don’t take too big chunk at the same time. Most often story or details of graphics and core mechanics may be first too far fetched, so it’s recommended to first create your actual engine to avoid taking too much at once. Story and graphics come later and at the start you need only vague plans about them.

When needed?

Like I said, bigger projects need planning usually more than smaller minigames and such. However, in my opinion, plan about very basic concept is always needed. You can of course plan just everything, but if you aren’t much writer you can skip the smallest things like effects and such and deal them extemporise. This needs some kind “wit” about game design or visual eye to make perfect so you should think carefully which features you decide to plan first. Very detailed planning is rather useless in graphical effects like glitters and such in my opinion, because most of them look nice only after tested in game. Same goes for little user interface features. Eventhough I recommend to plan carefully interface, especially if it’s rather complicated, testing it might show you some good little features like button shortcuts which you should add eventhough it’s not in your original design.

Game design documents

You can find many “official” and unofficial game design document templates which offer certain perspective to the planning. Some of these may prove to be helpful, personally I don’t like much them. For me they are often little too formal and include just very basic things which makes them rather useless for me. From my experience, it’s more recommended to make your plan something more like journal and evolving document to keep up your notes and ideas. Game design documents prove their meaning often when game is somekind team project where all members have to know what’s going on. In larger teams clearly written prove to be very helpful. For solo designer who designs games mostly himself, this kind documents are pretty useless though.

Conclusion

• Plan everything out one piece at time. Don’t plan everything from start.
• Good planning helps you to keep motivation and vision of the completed game.
• It helps you to balance things and make gameplay better.

Careful planning usually don’t pay you much and might save you from useless coding especially when combined to efficient prototyping. However, don’t take it too far and focus on most important things. Smaller things come later or can be added extemporise. Give comments if you think I should add something more to article or just leave your thoughts!

Tumetsu