Curious how much planning others do when creating games!

[Ghost]

I like it when I can start a game where one sentence tells you what it's going to be like. That summary needn't hold the whole plot or anything very specific, just a hard strong core. If that one clicks, that's a good enough start for me. A good example is Once Upon A Crime: "In a patchwork land where all fairy tales are real, a new tale tries to take roots." That was all I had for a game where the player would later play Red Riding Hood (Junior Private Investigator) discovering that her world is a computer game threatened by a virus.

After that I like to flesh out at least the main character and some hard facts about the setting, mood, story. I tend to make up pretty elaborate backstory even for small projects, stuff the player probably never learns about, but for me it's easier to put relevant things into a game when I know more than the player. For the main character I like to have a good solid background and some strong traits and I usually do a full set of static sprites before I put the game framework together.

And finally, I always write my ending first. It's a trick I picked up from a series of articles about IF game design. When you know the ending, you can always ask yourself how you got there. And that's better than asking "where do I go from here" because you already are at the destination. From that I try to come up with a few "milestones" in the game. Again, for Once Upon A Crime, this was "learn there was a crime", "interrogate the suspects", "get everything to make a truth serum", "find out there is a different threat", "defeat it with a hanky". Puzzles between those milestones often just pop up as the game takes shape. Maybe there is some interesting line in a dialog, or a cool inventory item that could get more use, or just a leftover location where something interesting could happen. That's the real fun, actually, making things up as I go along- some guidelines are there but the rest is freeform. I learned the hard way that the minute I have a game fully planned out on paper I lose all interest in it

So yeah: Strong core idea, a reliable character design, an ending I want the player to see, and some notes. That's Ghost planning (tm).

[StillInThe90s]

Planning for improvisation is probably a good idea as well. At least when it comes to code. A lot of puzzles in Camp 1 (WIP) were made without planning ahead very much. So later on, when I decided to change things, adding little bits or had to adapt puzzles to fit changes in the story, a whole bunch of little bugs started popping up everywhere. Why? I hadn't planned for improvised changes later on.
Improvised dialog is a completely different thing, though imo.

[ollj]

the planning phase is now different because now larger teams are needed for all the artwork-assets and voice acting.
larger teams usually lower runtime-flexibility, and you need to have a more detailed plan upfront.

[Mandle]

I learned the hard way that the minute I have a game fully planned out on paper I lose all interest in it

I was thinking this exact same thing today when I questioned myself why I lose interest in stuff just when it's almost finished, both in game dev and in the real world. I realized it is because the creation process is so exciting when the inspiration first hits and then loses its gleam while you are actually working on it and the work becomes real work instead of just a headlong rush into the unknown. It's a lot like a romance vs. a marriage: Romance is just all about the fun of the present and the exciting dreams of the future, but marriage is all about the reality of the present and the worries about where the future is actually going...

Neither would be any fun for anyone with a plan laid down from the start to the finish, but at the same time neither can ever last all the way through without at least some kind of plan...

Also: why would anyone ever choose "marriage counseler" as their job? Like, do you really want to listen to fighting couples all day long and then go home and talk about it with your spouse? I mean seriously...Does anyone really think that this is going to provide a healthy environment for their own relationship when they hear all day about cheating spouses, be they male or female and how both partners are ever going to obtain any kind of closu...

Errrrmmmm...I think I started this post by saying something about how I lost interest in stuff after a while, but I think I got bored with it...

So yeah, whatever I said in the middle bit I guess...