Dev Log 2: Project Proposal

Introduction

Another week, another dev log. This one in particular I'm quite excited about. The research that I did last week is now taking shape as a comprehensive game design, or at least the beginning stages of one. A project proposal is essentially a baseline game design document. This might be the first design document you ever make for a project. I'm a huge fan of passion driven projects, seeing the excitement and motivation in people that work on projects they really care about is always great. A project proposal, to me, is a way to express the passion you have for your project to prospective employers, coworkers, and investors. But it can't just be you rambling on about a game concept you care about, you need to show your experience and knowledge. You need to showcase creativity, empathy, authenticity, and capability. You need to show you know how to make a fun game that people will want to play.

Project

My game concept for my proposal is called "Form: A Fitting Adventure" it's a tale about sexual orientations and identities that are challenged by societal norms, standards, and procedures. I chose this topic in particular because of both my interest in it and its relevance to my personal life. I want to do this issue justice and spread some light onto it that's both educational and entertaining without compromise. The main narrative goal of the game is trying to instill a feeling of reluctance to change in order to fit through different passages in the game. The more the player compromises to change from what they wanted to start with, the weirder the world gets. The world becomes more estranged and dangerous as they change away from their start more and more.  There is a system I want to call "fluidly dynamic" where the tides can shift in any direction. Once the flow has been pushed too far one way, the player would get swept into that direction and face the end of that journey. In order to keep the player from feeling too anxious over their choices, they're giving the option to restart rapidly from any point in the game, keeping their accumulated items and currency. They also unlock their map as they progress through areas which persists into different playthroughs. I've taken a lot of inspiration from Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (2004) and Blaster Master (1988). I think the experience of both games sum up what I'm trying to accomplish with Form.

Proposal

The proposal itself is a 3 page document, not including the title page. Every element of it needs to be clear and concise. Leaving too many details up to interpretation might set expectations for a project that may not be what you intended. However, overloading the document with too much information makes it hard to absorb. No one wants to read a wall of text (this dev log gets a free pass because I get to express my thoughts about what I did here). It's important to find formatting that helps retain as much information as possible, helps important points flow from one to the other, and doesn't hurt the eyes of the readers. As you might imagine, this whole balance is little challenging. But, practice makes perfect. I've considered a few ways to write up a proposal, and I've boiled it down to a sequence of steps. Again. Sue me; I like step-by-step instructions:

1. Assemble the most crucial ideas of what your game concept is
   1. What's the genre?
   2. What is it similar to? Not just games, but movies, books, toys, etc. too
   3. What is the POINT?
      1. What's the goal of the project?
      2. Who is it for?
      3. What are the feelings you want to evoke?
      4. What feelings do you not want to evoke?
      5. Why is this important?
   4. How does gameplay string together? This one can be a little difficult to describe, so use diagrams, drawings, or references to illustrate it.
      1. What are the mechanics?
      2. How do the mechanics tie together?
      3. How do the mechanics reflect the Point of the game?
      4. What's the story? Don't write the whole story. Summarize it with crucial details. Don't be too wordy.
   5. What are you trying to do to make this project match everything you want it to be? <- This long question is referred to as pillars.
      1. What are the pillars of your game's concept and design process?
2. Break all that information up into appropriate sections.
1. How would you want all of the information in step one introduced to you? It's a lot to take in.
   1. Find a good way to summarize it. Personally I like the way Wikipedia articles summarize things. I use them as a model for the way I write my design documents.
   2. Briefly mention information that you will go into detail later. You don't need to describe whole systems at the start. It might be crucial to your design, but giving the reader just enough to understand what they're getting into is more important for comprehension.
   3. The story just needs one or two sentences in the intro, you can go into further detail in the story section.
   4. You also need at most 5 hooks to get the reader immediately interested in your game. This can be gameplay features (such as what you would see in trailers). You really want to include the most exciting or interesting parts of your design here. I chose:
      1. My narrative and moral.
      2. Uncovering a network of pathways
      3. Changing your form to proceed along in your adventure.
      4. Solving puzzles and defeating enemies
      5. Being able to restart from any point with little consequences, even after death.
   5. At this point, you should be at just a page worth of content. You need to cut down, and clear up, the wording. A diagram can be used to introduce complex details later. You want it all to be memorable. Creative wording and formatting is ideal.
2. Now you can focus on the bulk of the work. You essentially want to follow the same step as 2-a but without everything being condensed into one section. The next section should be the most important thing a reader would want to see right after that introduction. If you ended with talk of game mechanics, go straight into the gameplay features. If you were talking about principles and pillars, go into the goals and process of your design. If you concluded your intro with the story,  dig into more crucial details and discuss the feeling and experience of the narrative. Then chain it together with the next most relevant section given the conclusion of this one.

Step 2 there got pretty bulky, but it's also the core of the document. Step 1 is very important, but it's meant to set you up so that you're ready to start a proposal.

Conclusion

I'm definitely motivated and passionate about this project. Working through these last two dev logs really helped me put my whole process into perspective. I'm excited to present this proposal to my peers and I'm excited to hear their feedback. I think people will like Form. I might not have done it justice in this dev log, but there will be more of it to talk about in the future. I learned a lot about design document designing and I think it's only going to strengthen my practices as a designer.