The Importance of Illustration in a GDD

As I create pages within the game document and direct tasks for coding, it's become more and more apparent that in a good design document, the game designer should illustrate almost everything to better convey what they see in their mind.

I'm personally guilty of writing everything down in finely organized text and charts, with my own imagination filling in the blanks. The obvious danger of this is that the rest of the team will simply not be able to comprehend what your ideas are unless you make it as clear as possible. I'm an artist by trade, so the easiest way to go about that is just drawing or making a mockup.

After all, while this section in the GDD may convey most of the necessary information:

Something as simple as adding a little sketch can really help.

Or rather than giving a detailed text explanation about how swimming mechanics should work, I found that simply making an easy little image document (in addition to the detailed explanation) made things more clear:

So, lesson learned. When in doubt about explaining unclear mechanics, always take the time to create a visual example for the rest of the team, and save everyone a lot of time.

-Alex