Once a solid core is written down, you can then start organizing all the features that will make your game stand out and be worth playing. This can be a pretty fun process but avoid getting carried away. Instead of listing 50 vague features that will be impossible to all fit into the game, come up with around 5 to 10 main features that you absolutely must have or would love to have to make this game awesome.
Even if you have no plans on making a game any time soon, you should still practice making a design document based on any cool ideas you may have. Your game design document will help you do that in an effective, organized way. Learn the fundamentals of video game design theory, storytelling studies, game arts education, and video game programming with our intensive 1-Year Game Design certificate program.
Visit our 1-Year Program in Game Design page to learn more and apply today. So how, then, does one learn to write a game design document? Remember Who The Document Is For One of the first mistakes often made is writing a design document as if it will be read by gamers and potential customers. Sonic The Hedgehog is about completing stages as fast as you can.
Call of Duty is about surviving war scenarios in story campaigns and competitive multiplayer. Pokemon is about catching fictional creatures and developing them to become the best trainer. Super Smash Bros. Make A List Of Features Once a solid core is written down, you can then start organizing all the features that will make your game stand out and be worth playing. Before you sit down to write your game design document, it is crucial to understand that every GDD is unique based on its concept, characters, theme, and the world you are trying to create, and more.
However, there are some critical elements that all game design documents should cover to provide necessary and complete information to game developers and designers. This truly enables your game development team to organize their work better and drive their efforts in the right direction.
Here is a game design document template that includes all critical sections that can assist your team. You want to give your game a fun, catchy name that reflects on what the game is about. Choosing an attractive name really helps during the marketing and launch phase to gain the attention of players.
It makes sound simple, but finalizing a name can take time. So at this stage, you can provide a couple of your best options and finalize the name later on. This is like the summary of the game you want to create, without going into details about how it functions and so on. The goal here is that after reading your game description, people should know what type of game you want to build and the genre like puzzle, survival, battle royale, FPS, and more. You can also add some more information about your game that you think is relevant and important to your vision.
Ideally, this section of GDD should be one or two paragraphs long. The main character is a significant aspect of most games. They give their game concept a marked edge or make it more relatable or enjoyable for the players.
Hence, some people like to focus on their character s , from their appearance and any special physical feature to how they interact with other characters or other game elements.
If you have a particular vision or want to make some character choices, this is the stage to include them. However, some games may not have characters at all, like puzzles and word games. In that case, you can ignore this step. For some video game design documents, to be effective, this section makes all the difference.
The storytelling process is fundamental in some games. They help players empathize with the characters, and they feel more invested in the game. Hence, after introducing your characters, talk about the story or the world you are creating. Make sure to include the events that take place throughout the game and the environment.
You would want to keep these two aspects in mind when writing about your story. Introduction: What is a game design document, why should you make one, and how do you use this guide to make one? Genres: What kind of pet games are there, how are they different from each other? Distribution and Monetization: Getting the game to the player and the player's money to you. Avatar Creation: Human vs.
Trading, Shops and the Marketplace 9. Forums, Messaging, Chatting Tutorials, Quests, Reputation, and Levels Combat Finale: An overview of the game development process and how the design document is used during this process.
Introduction: Game Design Document - What? A game design document is a written description of proposed game.
In this guide I am assuming you, the reader, want to create a game. This makes you the game designer. Or a co-designer if you want to team up with someone who will also contribute ideas. Design is just another word for plan: a game designer plans out a game. In order to create a game you must decide what kind of game you want to create.
I am also assuming you are going to outsource some or all of the programming and art of your game to other people. The main purpose of a game design document is to paint a clear picture of a proposed game. The document describes what game parts otherwise known as features will be in the game, and how they will fit together. The process of creating a document helps a designer clarify their creative vision for a game and make sure there aren't any inconsistent or missing pieces.
The finished document is a record of all the design decisions that have been made. It can be given to others, in whole or in part, as a quick clear way of communicating the designer's vision. It can also be used as a checklist to track which pieces of code, art, and other assets have been created, until everything is checked off and the game is done! So, what is actually in a game design document?
A statement of the designer you or design team's purpose that they want the game to accomplish. You can write this as a serious statement of philosophy if you really want to, but it doesn't have to be anything complicated; instead you can just say "This game will be awesomely fun to play because Typically this part will be paragraphs long. A list of features you want the game to have this does double duty as your table of contents.
A description of each feature these are the sections listed in the table of contents, the "meat" of your design document. Appendixes listing all the characters, location, items, puzzles, monsters, etc. These lists are often added later, after the main design document is done. So really there are only 3 main parts - nice and simple. But, if, in the middle of making your design document, you happen to decide something like: "There are going to be six classes of pets in my game: Sun, Moon, Star, Shadow, Plaid, and Rutabaga.
What good is a game design document? How do you use it to help develop your game? As soon as you write a feature description it becomes useful because you can refer back to it when designing a related feature, so you don't forget what you decided. An in-progress design document is like a journal, but more organized because you will be showing it to other people as well as referring back to it yourself. If you are in a team, the design document serves as a record of what has been firmly decided and should not be squabbled over or changed without an important reason.
The design document can also be a fast way to orient a new team member to what is going on. Most importantly, when you have finished writing your design document the feature descriptions you have written are used as a guideline in the development process when programming a feature, creating graphics or sound files for that feature, and playtesting that feature.
When hiring a programmer or an artist the design document is both a checklist of all the tasks that need to be done to make the game, as well as a source of bite-size "assignments" that your employee s can do one at a time. You can do this by copying and pasting from your design document in to an email or forum post to a team member or employee, or by simply showing them your whole design document.
The same applies to tasks you are going to do yourself - if you get around to creating something a month after you initially designed it, re-reading what you wrote reminds you exactly what you decided to do and why. A game design document is also helpful as an organizational tool for your whole development process; it can be used as a plan you can then follow step-by-step to develop your game.
You can even check off within the game design document which tasks have already been completed by you and others. As these parts of the game are created, they form the alpha version of your game! And finally, material from a design document's statement of purpose and story section are often reused when creating promotional materials or a webpage for a game project or completed game, while material from the appendixes is often reused in item flavor text, NPC dialogue, and other places throughout the game.
Okay, so how do you make a game design document? You follow this guide! I will describe the various genres of pet game so you can identify which one you want to make.
I will describe the various features commonly found in each genre so you will have a starting list of features your game should have. Because this document is public domain copyright-free you are welcome to copy and paste as much of it as you can use directly into your own design document. You can also modify it however you want if you want features different than described here.
When there are two or three alternative versions of a feature I will try to describe the differences between them and which is better in what context, so you can pick which version you want to use, or you can use this as background knowledge when designing your own version of a feature. You will still need to create some of the material yourself, such as your statement of purpose, your story, names of characters and places, and all the parts where your own creativity is the essential ingredient.
But following this guide should be much faster and easier than creating your own design document from scratch, and hopefully the list of example features I'll describe here will make the guide flexible enough to help people design a wide variety of games. The first thing to realize is that there are different genres kinds of pet games, which have different feature sets. It's very helpful to any game designer to have played a variety of games so they remember experiencing a variety of features and can pick from that "mental toolbox" which features they want their own game to have.
If you have only ever played one kind of pet game, you would have difficulty trying to make anything other than that same type of pet game. If you want to make that kind of game, that's fine, though background knowledge of a variety of games would help you avoid designing a game that's just a rehash of something that already exists. So, I encourage all designers to play a variety of games, the same way writers should read a variety of fiction and artists should look at a variety of art. But it's ok if you already have a specific type of pet game in mind because you want to make a game similar to your favorite, or combining features of two or three of your favorites.
It's also ok if you just know that you want to make a pet game, but not know exactly what kind yet. Figuring out which kind you want your game to be is the first step in creating your own game design document! There are different kinds of genres.
Fantasy, science-fiction, and sports are also theme genres. There are art genres, like 2D vs. There are story genres, like horror games and romance games. Then there are gameplay genres, which is what people usually mean when they talk about genre: RPGs role playing games , sims simulations , MMOs massively multiplayer online games , and others less commonly seen in the realm of pet games, such as adventure games, FPSes first person shooters , and RTSes real-time strategy games.
The overall point of this section is for you to start writing your design document by listing what genres of different kinds apply to your game.
The idea is that a person can pick up your game design document and in the first few sentences you will give them a concise and clear description of your proposed game. Specifically you are going to fill in the blanks in this sentence: " [NameOfGame] will be a [2D or 3D or?
D] [optionally name the art style, e. Once you plug all the information in it will look like something sane, e. If you don't have an idea for your game's name yet, that's also fine. This section is not about brainstorming an awesome title which elegantly expresses the project's identity and grabs the attention of the project's target audience.
Actually, names are often changed as a creative project develops, and are often one of the last things to be decided. It's almost impossible to think of a great name at the beginning, when you don't fully know yet what the project will be. No, what we want here is a functional working title.
Something simple and handy you can use to name the file, discuss the project with others, and later use a search and replace to automatically put the game's real name in all the right places. So just pick something and fill in that first blank. Also, create a new document, name it Jane's Pet Game Design Document or whatever, then copy and paste that bolded sentence into it so you can fill in the blanks there.
Unless you prefer to use a pen and paper, that's fine too. Pet games or pet monster games, monster capturing games, monster breeding games, livestock ranching games, horse riding games, etc. They don't have to be literally animals, but instead anything that can be presented as animal-like, including plants, robots, alien creatures, magical beings, or virtual creatures.
Pet games could be divided into those where the player interacts a lot with one or a small number of creatures vs. Which of those are you more interested in creating? Approaching the question from a different angle, pet games could be divided into games where the pets' main role in the game is combat-related vs. Does one of these two types sound more like what you want to make? A game where you own one or a few companion pets or you are an animal or small group of animals and you fight alongside or through them.
A game where you fight to build up a collection of pets which become your army or workforce units in your combat squad, cards in a deck, or part of your home base producing stuff for you. A game where you care for one or a few pets and compete with them.
A game where you have a farm or ranch where you raise many pets to sell, compete with, or build up to a complete collection. Is one of those what you want to make?
An interactive story game where you talk to creature-characters, trying to befriend them or solve problems related to them. A game where each pet is a challenge because they need to be healed or tamed before they can be passed on to a permanent owner. A babysitting game where you must take care of the needs of several pets as fast as you can to keep them happy. A world simulation where you experimentally create creatures and see how they survive in the wild.
Add your own! Since those thirds are like apples, oranges, and, plums, it's quite difficult to balance them against each other if they conflict. All you can do is try to figure out if some factors are more relevant than others. For example if you, the designer, really hate one of the two styles and don't want to put time and effort into developing a game that will have that type of art, that probably overrules any other issues.
Or if you intend to be the primary artist and are only good at one of the two types, or you intend to be the primary programmer and already own a license for a game engine that is focused on one of the two types, that's also a strong argument for which you should go with.
Or, if you have a strong idea of some gameplay you want your game to have which is incompatible with one of the two types, that's another strong argument. It's convenient to the development process to decide early which type of art a game will use, but if you really are stuck between the two options it can be postponed until more data is available to reevaluate the choice.
Fortunately the question of art style as in things like realism, anime, western comic, gothic Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer Two main categories of computer games are online multiplayer games , and offline singleplayer games.
The big difference between these two types is that in singleplayer games the game's primary activity is always something the player does against computer-generated opponents, whether these are monsters or something more abstract like a time limit.
In multiplayer games, on the other hand, competition against other players or cooperation with other players is a significant part of the game even though the majority of the player's time within the game may still be spent of single-player activities. A few games have a limited online component, such as phone and Facebook apps where the only things the player can do online are buy cash shop items and send presents to neighbors; these have mainly singleplayer gameplay so I will include them in the singleplayer category.
Do you know whether you want to make a multiplayer or singleplayer game? Multiplayer Game Genres: Virtual Pet Sites - Pet Sites are characterized by having their primary multiplayer activities include forum posting and trading items or pets with other players.
Some VPS games include a breeding system, and if they do it is commonly possible to use other players' pets as breeding stock. Some games encourage the player to collect pets or other collectibles. Some VPS games include a minigame arcade; if they do this is typically the main source of player income within the game, and players may compete for high scores at the games.
Some VPSes include a clothing system, either for pets or human avatars. VPSes are the pet-themed version of social gaming sites, which are usually built around a forum with a customizable avatar and clothing system. This system is intended to facilitate player socialization by allowing players to present a carefully-chosen visual representation of themselves to others, and regularly update this visual representation to reflect holidays and other social events.
Minigame Arcades - Minigames are games which take a short time to play. They consist mainly of speedpuzzle games Tetris, Frozenbubble, Pouyopouyo , solitaires cards, Mahjongg, Minesweeper, Hangman, boardgames against a computer opponent , and arcade games beat-'em-ups, shoot-'em-ups, bullet hells, pinball. In many some cases it is possible but rare to win; in other cases it is impossible to win, instead the player is scored on how long they survived or how many targets they shot or bonuses they collected before losing.
A minigame does not have to have a forum or other social component; sometimes they are purely ad-supported and have no cash shop or membership. If a minigame arcade is combined with a social forum such as VPS the arcade is usually the method by which players can earn a daily income of game currency to spend on pets, clothing, or similar items. Minigames may not be terribly memorable or artistic, but they are convenient from a site maintainer's perspective because if one breaks or is disliked by player it is not related to the others and doesn't spoil the players' enjoyment of them.
Arcades are also easy to expand by adding new minigames, as opposed to larger games where new content must be integrated and balanced with existing content. One of the main goals is to earn a high rank in the competitive league of all players. Another goal may be to have the highest personal score on a particular course compared to your friends or other players who attempted that course during the current week or month.
These games come in two flavors, fast-paced for those who crave adrenaline, and slow-paced for those who prefer strategy and patient persistence. The fast-paced kind has a main activity of driving the pet at high speeds while avoiding obstacles with quick reflexes Or more rarely, fast-paced RTS combat between the armies belonging to two players. The slow-paced kind is a sim or RPG where the main activity is increasing pet stats through training, breeding, or interacting repeatedly with an individual pet; in these slower-paced PvP games the competitive activity is either automated or turn-based instead of real-time.
Both flavors of PvP game may have a singleplayer campaign or series of quests which teach the player how to play and may allow the player to earn higher levels and increased stats for individual pets or for the player's infrastructure.
Infrastructure is the property, tools, and abilities the player uses to produce competing animals: their ranch or other property, appliances and outbuildings for storing and breeding pets, training pets, or crafting useful items, their ability to breed higher-potential or rare baby pets, and their ability to modify pets.
Whether the game uses 2D or 3D graphics the key element is that friends can, in realtime, see each other doing stuff within the world. RPGs are fighting-focused games where the fighting is strongly effected by stats; the main activity of the game is increasing these stats through leveling up and getting better gear. Progress through the game is typically guided by NPCs non-player characters offering quests, but the player is usually free to wander anywhere they don't immediately get killed by higher-level monsters.
Please see the combat section for more details. Normal difficulty monsters are found by single players or pairs of players in the main game world, while instanced dungeons are populated with elite high-difficulty monsters and bosses that require teams players to work together. However PvP is structured, each player earns a PvP rank by their performance, and improving this rank is a goal and a source of pride.
Both PvE and PvP are the main source of player income in games featuring them. One possibility is that different pets might correspond to different types of guns, or perhaps biological armored suits that happen to include guns, or animal forms the player could shapeshift into which would happen to include distance attacks. The player would have the ability to bond with or equip one animal at a time, and which animal was equipped could affect range, firing speed, power, special effects like poison or freeze rays, and maybe things not directly related to shooting like the player's size, running speed, armor, healing speed, max health, jumping ability, etc.
Multiplayer FPS games are more different from MMOs and fast-paced PvP competition games because of the emphasis on short, intense interactions between people and their environment because the environment typically contains weapons, ammo, and healing items that the players have to scrabble for while avoiding being shot. Some FPS games have battle royale rules, meaning all players are against each other and the last one alive wins.
Other FPS games have team play, often inspired by capture the flag, with death being a temporary setback from which players respawn until other one team or the other captures the flag or destroys the other team's base, or whatever the specific goal is. The closest an RTS gets to a pet game is probably where the units are all creatures, and the buildings are either also creatures or are designed to feed or breed creatures.
SimAnt is a fairly clear example, while the Zerg race in Starcraft may require a bit of squinting to see as an army of the player's pets. RTSes are all about building up infrastructure and climbing a tech tree, as described in the entry on sims.
But in an RTS the play has to do it as fast as possible while being attacked by enemies, and the goal of PvP duels and most singleplayer missions is to exterminate the enemy from the map.
Sims on the other hand are generally slower-paced, and instead of extermination sims are usually about becoming the best pet-breeder or similar profession, and earning a lot of money this way. J stands for Japanese and W for Western, but that was a historical division that is no longer accurate. These days both types of RPG can be made anywhere. In jRPGs the player's progress through the game's story and world is regulated mainly by quests and puzzles which must be solved to unlock the player's ability to move to a new physical are of the game.
In wRPGs the game is usually less linear, with the player free to wander anywhere they can stay alive.
Both games have a focus on playable characters and their use in combat, which can come in all the varieties listed under MMORPG. Singleplayer RPGs by definition cannot have PvP, so all play is PvE, unless the game has limited multiplayer functionality which allows dueling outside the main context of the game.
But the main activity of the game is fighting monsters and bosses. The overall goal of this activity is to become the best fighter in the world and beat the biggest bad guy in the world. As with singleplayer versions of strategy games, singleplayer competition games are often organized in the form of a campaign, a sequence of increasingly complex and difficult competitions which will eventually result in becoming the world-wide winner of whatever the particular competitive activity is.
Like the PvP version the PvE version is split into fast-paced activities like racing and flying games and slow-paced activities like pet shows of the beauty contest variety. This genre is the one that most commonly tends to be confused about whether it is a game or a toy, though VPSes and sims may also suffer from this confusion. This causes problems both during development and for players of the finished game.
See the entry below about Virtual Toys for info about avoiding this mistake. Babysitting Game or Time Management Game - Other pet games often include a babysitting segment for raising young pets or breeding pets. Babysitting games can also be minigames. Technically they are a hybrid between a speedpuzzle game and a sim. A time management game is the non-combat version of an RTS, though in most time management games you control one unit rather than an army of units.
What happens in a babysitting game is that the pets have happiness, health, cleanliness, sleepiness, or similar gauges. And these meters will get lower until the pet is very unhappy or dies, if the player does not intervene. Either the player can select the pet to see all of its gauges, or the pet will emote any need that crosses into the danger zone, or both. In some cases pets do not have health gauges; Lemmings is a classic example. The pets move of their own volition and often encounter fatal obstacles.
The player must use some pets to solve the level's puzzle while keeping enough pets alive to lead them through the final gate to safety and satisfy the level's victory condition.
When babysitting is the main activity of a standalone game the game is typically organized into a campaign, and each level of mission has a time limit. Time management games have a similar dynamic where the player runs around as fast as they can trying to fulfill a variety of needs. These goal of the game is not to maintain happiness though, it's probably to grow, breed, or craft something which can be sold for money, as in a Tycoon game. Sims and RPGs may also both include crafting and building up an infrastructure by climbing a tech tree.
Where RPGs have an overall goal of becoming the best fighter in the world, sims and tycoons usually replace this with a goal of becoming the best farmer or breeder or collector or crafter in the world. As the player gains experience they usually unlock new resources and special abilities related to this profession. Tycoons are a subgenre of sims; there's no real difference between the two except that tycoons have more of an emphasis on making money via selling the results of your sim-labor, while non-tycoon sims sometimes don't even have a currency system.
Sim games usually have tech trees. A tech tree is a structure where the player puts effort into unlocking or mastering low level abilities, which are prerequisites to unlocking or mastering higher level abilities. For more details see the crafting section below. Adventure Games and Interactive Story Games - Adventure and interactive story are actually two different genres, I'm just combining them here because they are so often seen together.
Both of them typically lack combat, though they can be hybridized with a kind of game that has combat for example the Zelda series are action-adventure hybrids.
Both of them are typically singleplayer because, like sim gameplay, puzzle-solving gameplay is very difficult to make multiplayer without interfering with what makes it fun. The difference between these two genres is: Adventure games have physical puzzles that the player solves by flipping switches, turning knobs, sliding things along tracks, using pipes to move fluids around, igniting fires, and that sort of thing.
Interactive story games mostly involve talking to other NPCs in a form of interaction called a dialogue puzzle, where the player can choose from a list of options what to say or do, and the choice made affects how the NPC decides to act, which in turn sends the plot of the game in one of a few different directions.
In fact an interactive story game as a whole can be seen as one big puzzle where the player tries to carry out the right steps in the right order to get the best possible ending; many interactive story games expect the player to play through the game more than once the same way adventure games expect the player to need to restart puzzles if their first attempt at solving the puzzle turns out to be the wrong strategy.
So both genres are about solving puzzles, the difference is just whether the puzzle pieces are physical objects or people. And it's common for games to have puzzle pieces of both types, thus making the game a combination of the two genres. Where do pets come in? Well, pets can be puzzle pieces, such as in a game about herding sheep through mazes. Animal-forms or summons can be puzzle solving techniques, such as a game where the player changes into a spider or summons a spider to weave a giant spiderweb that acts as a net to solve a puzzle, or the player changes into a bull or summons a bull to push a heavy object that they otherwise couldn't move.
Or the player could be responsible for a space ark full of animal characters and have to matchmake between the animals so they are ready to produce lots of baby animals when they land on their target alien planet. There are all sorts of ways a game could be about solving complex puzzles involving animals. Virtual Toys - Virtual Toys resemble games, but they generally have no goals or victory conditions. In the realm of non-pet games, Minecraft is the most notable example of a virtual toy in the past few years, though it has grown more game-like features such as deadly monsters since it was first created as a virtual lego-like toy.
As a designer it's important to be aware of whether you want to make a game or a toy, since players who expect one will be disappointed if they get the other.
Games and toys are both fun but not really in the same way, and software which has half game features and half toy features can be confusing and frustrating to the player - in other words, they can fail to be either kind of fun. A game is a piece of multimedia entertainment where the writing has to work as a partner with the gameplay which is programming underneath and the art.
Well, not all games have stories, and virtual toys may have story but don't have goals. But this section is aimed at games that have a medium or high amount of story. The word in the section heading that it's most likely readers will be confused by is theme. So let's talk about theme first.
Above, we've talked about games which are focused on combat or competition, exploring at a relaxed pace or being super-efficient, solving puzzles or building up a small empire.
I've mentioned that games also come in flavors like funny, cute, scary, magical, high-tech, and many others. All of these are theme, though they don't get at the heart of theme. Theme is the statement your game makes about what the game world is like and what the player's role is within that world.
Who the player should be and what they should do to be declared the winner of virtual life. All forms of fiction, including games, are interpreted by the player's or reader's brain as life experience from which they may learn something about the real world and real life. This is why fiction is referred to as "the lie which tells a truth". The details are all made up, but characters act in ways that express truths of human nature, because they are based on the author's experience of themselves and others.
The characters must behave in ways the audience finds psychologically and sociologically plausible, otherwise the characters will feel fake and the audience won't be able to suspend their disbelief and get immersed in that piece of fiction. Similarly, fictional worlds, though they can have magic or gameplay conventions that don't match the real world, are based on the creator's experience of the world.
They must behave like something in the real world, though it's common to substitute something simpler for something too complicated, random, or slow to be quick fun. For example growing plants in a game is usually much faster and less prone to random disasters than growing plants in real life. And a difficult skill like picking a lock with several tumblers may be substituted for with a simpler locking mechanism like a sliding block puzzle.
Fictional worlds must be internally consistent so that players feel satisfied because they are learning to master an interesting new environment, and don't feel like the game is "cheating" or "AI stupid".
AI stupid refers to a game being unable to recognize what the player is trying to do or refusing to accept a solution that seems logical and realistic from the player's point of view but the game has not been programmed to understand.
For example, say a player must combine a string and a stick in their inventory to make a bow. If using the string on the stick works correctly but using the stick on the string results in an error, that's a classic example of AI stupidity. What kinds of themes do games commonly express? A game where the player spends all their time fighting, for example, can't help but promote the idea that the way one wins at life is by being the best warrior.
Most of us aren't fighters in real life but the message still comes across that traits which are important to winning fights, like toughness, are important to cultivate in oneself. Also that the problems we encounter in life can be thought of as battles, with enemies we ought to attack and vanquish. An adventure game which has puzzles instead of combat has totally different messages: awareness of one's surroundings, creativity in using tools, and manipulative finesse when dealing with other people are connected with success, while straightforwardly attacking an enemy with a weapon as unsophisticated as a sword seems unlikely to work and unwise.
Strategy games are about using one's intelligence and awareness of surroundings to directly and forcefully overwhelm an opponent. A time management game where you have to be efficient and fast to survive can make you reflect that you should be acting more industrious and efficient in your real life, and avoid activities that are inefficient or not obviously productive.
Now, games and stories are not about preaching or brainwashing and don't have a strong effect on most people's beliefs. Usually audiences already have their own beliefs about what kind of role they want to play in what kind of world, and will seek out games that deliver a message they are already familiar with because everyone likes some positive reinforcement, and wants to hear more stories of kinds they already know they enjoy hearing.
So as a designer the idea isn't really to say what you think people ought to hear, but instead to analyze the games whose stories you love, and why you love them, and how you can create a game world and cast of characters who will be as much fun for your players. As an added bonus you and your team members will be more motivated on writing bits of story and creating pieces of art to illustrate fun ideas.
So, a simple way to get started brainstorming story ideas for your game is to make a list of game stories you have really enjoyed. Novels, anime, movies, and folktales are all good source material too. Who would you want to be in a game, that your players might enjoy being in your game? What kind of game world would you like to spend time in, that your players might also enjoy spending time in?
Since this is a pet game, and you've already decided whether you want one or many pets to be used in a combat or non-combat situation, let's get more specific about that! What should they look like and how would you enjoy interacting with these creatures? No need to limit yourself to story ideas if any gameplay ideas are occurring to you too. Scribble all your ideas down, because it's much easier to work with ideas you can see in front of you than ones floating nebulously around in your head.
If you already have a strong idea of what kind of experience you want your game to be for your players, you can cross out things you like but aren't compatible with this particular project. You can always use them in another project in the future! For example, I think breeding systems are awesome, but a breeding system doesn't fit very well with a game where you want the player to only own and use one or a few pets.
So if I wanted to make a game which was about a player bonding with one pet, I'd save my elaborate breeding system ideas for a different game design. Or, if I wanted to make a game about the player as an individual becoming the best warrior ever, I would consider making the player a shapeshifter or animal who fights opponents alone, instead of a human who fights with pet companions.
I can't talk about every possible case here, or even go into detail about different brainstorming techniques. You can use whatever techniques work for you.
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