As I've been writing my GDD the section that I've been neglecting the most is the high concept. I've realized this is a major problem. When I look back at different mechanics that I've designed I start to wonder how important they are to the core experience and whether they even work well together or where they clash completely. While my word count is increasing overall, it fluctuates as I develop new ideas and change or scrap old ones. I realise this is part of how concepts develop over time but writing detailed explanations of mechanics, only to scrap them later on, is clearly a waste of time. I can work through these issues in my head and using diagrams which is much faster and only once I've got a unified picture do I need to describe it's parts in depth.
So to help me do this I'm going to develop my high concept by asking myself the following questions:
What kind of experiences are most important to this game.
What mechanics do I have/can I develop to help create these kinds of experiences in the player.
I will have my high concept section finished this weekend and the rest of the GDD should flow much smoother from then on.
On a side note I've decided to scrap the Sci-fi theme and take the concept back to a more medieval feel. While I liked the idea of blending magic and technology and it did create an interesting narrative it was making the game design more of a pain. The choice between what to use for what purpose was giving me a headache; should I use grenades or fireballs, magical barriers or claymores, clairvoyance or satellite imaging. The options where literally endless and I'm trying to create a very tight, minimal set of mechanics that all fit nicely together.
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