Design Documents

Design Documents

Roberta Williams

Partial Design Documents from some of Roberta Williams' games.

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

• King's Quest VI Design Document (excerpts)
• The Making of King's Quest VI

The Colonel's Bequest

• The Colonel's Bequest Design Document

Al Lowe

Al Lowe wrote:

Over the years I've had many requests from newcomers to the gamedesign field to share what I know about adventure game design. So here's a rough lesson for those who want to spend some time studying: you can see the actual game design document for some of my games. (I would share the designs for the other games, but I can't seem to find them in a format readable by today's word processors.)

At some point during the development process, I stopped updating the design document as changes were made and we just made the changes directly into the code.

You won't find any dialogue here. I always waited to create that directly in Sierra's "Message Editor," an in-house editor that allowed me to edit game text, conversations, descriptions, etc. while the game was being programmed. It was a wonderfully interactive way to create dialog.

Game design documents for some of Al Lowe's games.

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work (1991)

• Leisure Suit Larry 5 Design Document

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! (1993)

• Leisure Suit Larry 6 Design Document

Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! (1996)

• Leisure Suit Larry 7 Design Document

Leisure Suit Larry's Casino|Leisure Suit Larry's Casino (1998)

Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist (1992)

• Freddy Pharkas Design Document
• Leisure Suit Larry's Casino Design Document

Torin's Passage (1994)

• Torin's Passage Design Document

Space Quest

A storyboard from Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers.

Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991)

Space Quest 6 Storyboard