Throughout my time as a student with AIE, I've had to conceptualize and communicate clear design ideas using various forms of documentation, typically these would come in the form of a GDD (or Game Design Document) which outlines a project's design.
These documents (ordered chronologically from newest to oldest) showcase the documentation I'm proudest of.
Mage Escape was initially a concept for the major assessment of my Advanced Diploma, a large portion of which involved selling a team of Artists and Programmers on the vision and overall project.
The GDD for Mage Escape was the most involved GDD I'd ever made, each page was initially written as a series of dot-points which I then tried to condense into smaller one-page designs for each mechanic.
Ultimately, the design would go on to be the basis for our major project for the year, and you can read more about the project's development on it's page.
The GDD for Purgatory was initially meant to be a quick and dirty return to writing documentation after a short break between my first and second years of study.
Purgatory was conceptualized as an 8-Bit Roguelike Dungeon-Crawler and was the subject used to create an Economy Prototype that simulated the scaling of both Player and Enemy power levels using a series of adjustable variables.
Although the project was never actually made, it is a design concept that I'm especially proud of, and I think that the one-page designs of this document are some of the best I've made.
Yōkai SMASH was created for the major assessment of my Diploma of Screen and Media at AIE in 2020. You can see more about the game's development on it's page.
The GDD for Yōkai SMASH was based on an initial concept from an Artist working on the same team. It was initially scoped to be a much larger game, although time constraints of the assessment meant that the scope had to be drastically reduced during the design phase.
The GDD for >Maker was the first piece of series documentation I had ever made for a game project. It was also the first assessment piece I submitted at AIE, so it will always hold a special place for me as where I started.
Our instructions for the assessment were to come up with a design for a game and communicate it through a GDD as clearly and in as much detail as we could, and to iterate on the document based on the feedback of our peers.
Despite the project never being made as a full game, the GDD will always be a reminder of how I first began my journey into this industry, and a good example to look back on to see how far I've come.