Blade...

In all honesty, you came here, and asked people to post their constructive criticism of your design doc.

Fastlane hes weighed in with the most complete crtique of your work, and while you did take some of it to heart, most his critique, as well as others, you seem to be taking way too personally.

My crit is pretty much in the same line as theirs: even unfinished, it is a whopping 7 pages long, but only really has three full pages of text describing what this game is supposed to be.

Lets go through it piece by piece, and please, I do understand that 'it isn't finished', so if/when you respond, refrain from going down that route:

Overall:


- Dot the "i"'s

The document as a whole could use a run through a spell/grammar check. This is your 'baby', treat it as something equally precious to you.

The purpose of a design doc is to get your idea across to the party across the table and draw them in, making them believe that your project is something worth investing in, be that in time, resources or money. Nothing will put someone off more than seeing what should be spit-shine polished in front of them, and it looks like you spent 5 minutes typing it up, errors and all.

Prime example: In the very first sentence of the document, you have 4 spelling errors. Harry Potter may be a fictional character, but his name is still a proper noun and should be capitalized, as should the name of the game, since it is a title.

- Details

This has been hit on before. If I were a publisher, investor, or freelance developer who was looking for something to do just for the hell of it, I would want to know that the project I am considering spending my time, money, resources or talent on is going to be directed by a person who has a crystal clear vision of what they want to accomplish.

You have to write this with a specific target audience in mind: the clueless. You have to assume that, no matter how popular the subject matter or concept is, the person who is holding your document has absolutely no clue what you are talking about. Get specific about everything, especially (and most importantly) the things that make your game or idea unique.

- Consistency

There are a couple of things that glare at me in this regard. The first, in your overview, you state that this project is going to encompass the ground covered in ALL the books, and later pull back that scope to one book at a time. Another one is Quidditch. You state, under lessons, that once the player completes the flying lesson, they will unlock the ability to play Quidditch as a mini-game, yet later, under collectables, you say that finding all the pieces to the Quidditch set will unlock it... which is it?

This goes hand in hand with details, as you have to ensure that while you delve into the details to a sufficient depth to make everything understandable and interesting, you don't get so caught up and confused by them that you forget to keep them straight in several different areas of the document.


I'll leave you with this, as this really needs a lot more meat on it's bones to be a design document... It really reads more like the writing on the back of a game box, that gets the player hooked into picking up the game and buying it, than it does as a vehicle to convey a dream or vision of grand scope.