As designers we are always looking for the best tool to communicate our ideas. At Fishing Cactus we always try to come up with collaborative solutions and we try to keep the following motto: “not make a 100 pages design document”. Instead we try to find solutions to keep the design document light and readable for different audiences. Managers want to have an overview of the game in order to evaluate scope. Programmers want to have a clear understanding of the mechanic they have to implement and game designers want to know how a mechanic works with another. Most of the time all these people are looking for either a very detailed aspect of the game or a big overview.

All design documents are living pieces, changes in scope and gameplay mechanics occur more than once in the lifespan of a game project. Also there are different types of design documents: game concept, game treatment, one pager, game design document, game backlog (if you are using SCRUM). Also, a variety of production documents is generated as the design undergoes implementation (asset lists for one, localization texts list and so on…).
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