Appendix A Sample Design Document:Atomic Sam ........

Appendix A Sample Design Document:Atomic Sam...........

T

he following design document is for a simple console character-action game
calledAtomic Sam. The game itself is far from revolutionary and, from a design
standpoint, part of its appeal is its simple nature. It is part of a project I was previ-
ously involved with that was never developed into a finished game. Despite this, the
reader can consider the document to be “authentic,” since it is written in the exact style
and format I have used in design documents for projects that have made it all the way
through production.
As a result of its simplicity, the design document forAtomic Samis not very large. I
have written documents five times the length of this one for other projects, and even
those documents were not as big as others in the industry. Parts of this document were
deliberately kept short, since it was not intended to be a complete design document, but
rather to give its reader an idea of whatAtomic Samwould be without fully detailing

535