I’ve uploaded my first release to Itch; Skirmish, a prototype card game! I started working on it while I was first waiting to be accepted into a business startup program, and I continued as I developed my business plan. I wanted to implement a card game using standard playing cards and to practice using Godot. I started with War and got it modeled, but the lack of choice frustrated me - it wasn’t fun at all.

The first draft of the Game Design Document (GDD) for my game is about 80% done, and with it, I’m now able discuss it coherently and start getting feedback. On Tuesday, I attended my first ROC Game Dev open project night and chatted with a number of other developers, played what folks were working on, and discussed my project. I heard a cautionary tale of patent squatting on procedurally generated enemy systems; what I was planning didn’t intersect, but it was a good warning.

The holidays have come and passed, and I’ve been working on a Game Design Document (GDD) for my first commercial game. In practice, it’s a comprehensive, living, descriptive software design document that will serve as the implementation guide. Right now, it’s about 4500 words, and it’ll grow a bit more, but I’m also going to do an editing pass; it should be accessible and useful. It’s over half done.

There are a lot of resources available for GDDs, such as Gamescrye’s archive, Jason Bakker’s GDD Template, and Indie Game Academy’s Template.