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Awesome Game Design Awesome

A curated list of publicly available game design documents, design bibles, pitch documents, postmortems, learning materials, architecture resources, and tools. The main focus is game design materials; development tools and assets are included at the end.

I do not own any of these documents. All rights belong to the original authors. Links are provided for reference and educational purposes only.

Enjoy.

Contents

Aggregators and Archives

  • Game Documents - Curated index of publicly available game design documents, pitches, and templates.
  • VGHF Digital Archive - Video Game History Foundation's digital archive, including a Development and Production Materials collection of design documents and pitches.
  • VGHF Library Catalog - Full catalog of VGHF holdings, including materials not yet digitized.
  • Game Design Document Resources - Curated examples and templates for game design documents.
  • Valve Archive - Archive of Valve's internal design documents, press kits, and production materials.

Finished Game Design Documents

Pitches and Unreleased Documents

Templates and Examples

Learning Materials

General Design

Level Design

  • The Level Design Book - Free, actively maintained reference on level design theory and practice.
  • Steve Lee - Level design breakdowns from a lead designer on Dishonored 2 and BioShock Infinite.

Systems and Economy Design

  • GDKeys - Practical deep dives into economic systems, skill trees, and progression.
  • Deconstructor of Fun - Analysis of free-to-play economies and monetization.

Narrative Design

Player Psychology and UX

Game Feel

Accessibility

Game Audio

Practitioner Essays

Academic Research

  • Game Studies - The founding open-access games research journal.
  • DiGRA Digital Library - Open archive of DiGRA conference proceedings.
  • ToDiGRA - Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association.

Courses

Video Channels

Podcasts and Newsletters

Postmortems

(The following archive was originally compiled from pixelprospector.com and is preserved via the Wayback Machine.)

Indie Postmortems

1998-1999

2000-2004

  • Gish (Chronic Logic) [2004]

2005-2009

2010-2014

2015-2019

2020-2024

2025-2026

Cancelled and Shut-down Projects

Data and Metrics Postmortems

Game Jam Postmortems

AAA Studio Postmortems

1998-1999

2000-2004

2005-2009

2010-2014

2015-2019

2020-2024

Classic Game Postmortems (GDC Videos)

Special Postmortems

GDD Creation Tools

  • Dundoc - Collaborative game design document and idea management tool.
  • Nuclino - Lightweight collaborative wiki for team knowledge and documents.
  • Affine - Self-hosted note-taking and knowledge base that works well for GDD creation.
  • IMS Creators - Collaborative game design tool integrated with project management.
  • Obsidian - Local-first Markdown knowledge base; portable GDD that survives vendor shutdown.
  • Notion - Widely used team knowledge base and GDD workspace.
  • GitBook - Hosted documentation with search and permissions.
  • Milanote - Visual boards with purpose-built game design templates.
  • World Anvil - Worldbuilding and lore wiki with timelines and maps.
  • LegendKeeper - Lightweight collaborative worldbuilding wiki for small teams.
  • Kanka - Self-hostable campaign and world wiki.

Game Architecture

Entity Component System (ECS)

  • Overwatch Gameplay Architecture - GDC talk by Timothy Ford on Overwatch's ECS usage.
  • Flecs - High-performance C/C++ ECS.
  • EnTT - Header-only C++ ECS used in many shipped games.
  • ECS FAQ - Canonical explainer of ECS, archetypes, and data-oriented design.

State Machines and Behavior Trees

  • Dundoc - Avenge your Game Idea and Plunge into the Future Gaming Portal. Design your game idea the right way
  • Nuclino - A lightweight and collaborative wiki for all your team's knowledge, docs, and notes
  • Affine - Great self-hosted note taking/knowledge base that serves well for GDD creation
  • IMS Creators - Collaborative game design creation tool integrated with project management
  • Beehave - Behavior trees for Godot with live debugging.
  • UnityHFSM - Hierarchical finite state machine for Unity.
  • Stateless - Engine-independent state machine library for .NET.
  • Strudo - Game development documentation platform for creating and managing GDDs and other production documents.

Networking

  • Mirror - Open-source Unity networking library.
  • FishNet - Modern open-source Unity networking alternative.
  • LiteNetLib - Reliable UDP library for custom authoritative servers.
  • Gaffer On Games - Glenn Fiedler's articles on networked physics and client-server architecture.
  • Client-Server Game Architecture - Clear explanation of prediction, reconciliation, and lag compensation.

Game AI

  • Game AI Pro - Free professional chapters on behavior, pathfinding, and scheduling.

Architecture Books and Courses

Game Design Tools

Narrative Design Tools

  • Arrow - Open-source tool for nonlinear interactive storytelling.
  • Twine - Open-source tool for interactive, nonlinear stories.
  • articy:draft - Professional narrative design tool with version control and collaboration.
  • Ink/Inky - Inkle Studios' narrative scripting language.
  • Yarn Spinner - Dialogue system used in Night in the Woods and other narrative games.
  • Arcweave - Web-based narrative design tool with real-time collaboration.
  • StoryPlay - Visual editor for building interactive experiences.
  • Ren'Py - The standard open-source visual novel engine.
  • Dialogic - Full visual novel dialogue addon for Godot.
  • Dialogue Manager - Lightweight Godot dialogue system with a visual editor.
  • PatterKit - Line-based voiced dialogue pipeline with coverage testing.

Game Balancing and Systems Design

  • Machinations - Visual design tool for game systems and balancing.
  • Loopy - Draw feedback-loop and system simulations in the browser.

Level Design Tools

  • Tiled - The de-facto 2D tilemap editor.
  • LDtk - Modern 2D level editor with auto-layers and engine integrations.
  • TrenchBroom - Modern Quake and Doom-class 3D brush editor.
  • Ogmo Editor - Simple 2D level editor.

Game Development

Learning Resources

Game Engines

Popular Open Source Engines

  • Bevy - Data-driven game engine built in Rust.
  • Godot Engine - Popular open-source 2D/3D engine under the MIT license.
  • Defold - Free 2D game engine particularly strong for mobile development.
  • GDevelop - No-code, visual-scripting engine for designers and students.
  • O3DE - Open-source 3D engine with CryEngine lineage.
  • Stride - Full C# 3D engine with an editor.
  • Fyrox - Rust 3D engine with a full editor.
  • Wicked Engine - Modern C++ renderer and engine.

Lightweight and Specialized Engines

  • LÖVE - Free 2D game framework using Lua.
  • Pico-8 - Fantasy console for making and sharing tiny games.
  • raylib - Lightweight C framework for prototyping.
  • MonoGame - XNA successor used by many indie titles.
  • FNA - Faithful XNA reimplementation that ships on consoles.
  • libGDX - Mature cross-platform Java and Kotlin framework.
  • Heaps.io - Haxe engine behind the Dead Cells toolchain.
  • HaxeFlixel - 2D Haxe framework for jam-scale games.
  • SDL - The lowest-level portable layer most engines build on.
  • SFML - C++ multimedia library for building custom engines.

Web Engines

  • Phaser - Leading HTML5 2D engine.
  • Babylon.js - Full-featured web 3D engine.
  • three.js - Standard WebGL and WebGPU 3D library.
  • PlayCanvas - Browser-based collaborative 3D engine and editor.

Game Assets

  • Kenney - Public-domain art and audio assets for prototyping.
  • OpenGameArt - Free assets with varying licenses.
  • Lospec - Pixel art palettes and tools.
  • Material Maker - Node-based procedural PBR material authoring.
  • LibreSprite - Open-source pixel art and animation editor.
  • Piskel - Browser-based pixel art and spritesheet editor.

Community

Forums and Communities

  • r/gamedesign Wiki - Curated resources from the Reddit game design community.
  • r/gamedev - Largest general game development community.
  • r/gameai - Focused game AI and gameplay programming community.
  • r/roguelikedev - Systems and procedural generation depth with weekly dev logs.
  • r/IndieDev - Indie feedback and marketing community.
  • TIGSource Forums - Long-running developer log forum.
  • itch.io - Game jams, playtesting, and release platform for indie and experimental work.
  • Unreal Slackers - Large Unreal Engine community Discord.

Industry Reading

  • IGDA - International Game Developers Association resource library.
  • GameDev.net - Long-running game development community with articles and forums.
  • GDC Vault - Archive of Game Developers Conference talks.
  • 80.lv - Technical art and game development articles and interviews.
  • GameFromScratch - Engine and tool news and reviews.

Other Awesome Lists

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.

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A comprehensive list of Game Design related learning materials, examples and tools.

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