Cellar Door Games has released the original Design Notes for their Rogue Legacy game. Originally the game was called Rogue Castle and the development process is explained with pictures from the design notes.
Design Document
Captain Claw Game Design Document
Captain Claw is a 2-D sidescrolling platformer, developed by Monolith Productions for Microsoft Windows PC’s. Along with a review, the original Game Design Document (scroll to the bottom of the page) can be found here.
Apocalypse Now game design document
The Apocalypse Now movie will have a new video game. It is going to be a game for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, macOS and Linux. At this moment the developers try to raise enough money to complete the game.
The Apocalypse Now game design document be found here.
Update: the game seems to be canceled, it’s official website is offline.
Starfox 2 Design Documents and Manual
List of Game Design Documents (Fallout, Tron, Silent Hill and more)
Mikael Segedi, a game designer and project manager has linked some intriguing game design documents from his website. The ones from Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, Tron and Silent Hill were new for me, but the other ones are also interesting to read. This is his complete list:
- Doom
- Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2
- Grand Theft Auto
- Grim Fandango
- Silent Hill
- Torment
- Tron
- Diablo
Narbacular Drop (Portal predecessor) documents
The design documents for Narbacular Drop, created by Nuclear Monkey Software, can still be found on the website of DigiPen Institute of Technology.
The original developers showed the Narbacular Drop game to Valve, which offered to let them develop it’s successor Portal at Valve. On this website several different kind of documents about the game can be found (Docs section) as well as the finished game (Downloads section).
Double Fine Productions Game Design Documents from Lee Petty
Game developer Lee Petty from Double Fine Productions has placed some interesting game design documents on his Scribd page:
- HeadLander Casting Document
- Brutal Legend Material Standards
- Stacking GDD
- Stacking: The Triple Decker Tank Engine Level Design
- Stacking: Stacking Zeppelin Level Design
Game design documents and pitches from designer Thomas Grové (Street Fighter IV: Flashback and more)
The designer Thomas Grové shares many really interesting game design documents, pitches and even visual prototypes on his personal website (scroll down to “Concept Documents” section). Files for the following games can be found there:
- Street Fighter IV: Flashback
- Tony Jaa’s Fighting Force
- Valkyrior
- Street Fighter: Power Battles
- Kung Fu Dream
- And some interesting design Tests
Pid game design document from Might and Delight
The Game Design Document about Pid – Peculiar Destination from Might and Delight tells about the design for the game. It’s a stealth platforming adventure game with puzzles, rendered in a lovely art style.
Game design documents from designer Richard Hill-Whittall
On his personal website the game development entrepreneur Richard Hill-Whittall uploaded many game design documents. Some of the games are released some of them were not. He shared the documents for the following games:
- Build’n Race
- Build’n Race Extreme (renamed to VTrax)
- Combat Tanks
- City Defender
- Monsters
- Pool Hall Pro
- Vertigo