Overview

This week focused on strengthening the project’s pre-production foundation by refining its visual direction, restructuring the core design documentation, and expanding the planning framework into more complete production documents. A large part of the work went into improving the mood board and visual references, which helped establish a clearer tone for the project while also informing some early UI concept work. On the design side, the GDD was overhauled to improve coherence and lock scope, while the systems and content lists were built out to better define what the game actually needs. By the end of the week, the project had a much clearer visual target, stronger scope control, and more developed design, worldbuilding, and technical documentation.

Major Accomplishments

• Improved the mood board and visual reference set to reach a stronger starting point for the project’s tone.
• Created early UI concepts for important screens.
• Completed a major GDD overhaul and locked the scope section.
• Built the feature, systems, and content lists and filled in most known template information.
• Created and filled the initial LDD structure.
• Created and filled the WDD at a high level, including faction identity, wave structure, and battlefield tone.
• Began the Technical Design Document and started expanding high-level system details.

Systems Developed or Updated

Visual Direction / Mood Board

• Defines the game’s tone, mood, and broad visual target for production.
• This week focused on improving the mood board, organizing stronger visual references, and reaching a more solid starting point for the project’s artistic direction.
• Current state: Functional

UI Concept Planning

• Establishes the intended presentation and layout direction for important player-facing screens.
• This week included creating concept UI for key screens to support the visual and usability direction of the project.
• Current state: Prototype

Game Design Documentation (GDD)

• Defines the game’s features, scope, and overall design coherence.
• This week involved a full pass on the GDD to improve consistency, expand concepts into more fully defined features, and lock the scope section.
• Current state: Functional

Feature and Content Planning

• Organizes the planned systems, features, and content categories needed for production.
• This week included consolidating the project lists, creating the systems and content list, assigning known template information, and building out the release-facing content structure.
• Current state: Functional

Level Design Documentation (LDD)

• Defines structural rules for encounters, wave composition, faction templates, and difficulty ramping.
• This week included creating the LDD structure, defining the wave structure template, defining the faction template, and documenting high-level difficulty ramp rules.
• Current state: In Progress

World Design Documentation (WDD)

• Establishes the game’s narrative framing, faction identity, and how different factions influence battlefield presentation.
• This week included writing high-level backstory and lore lines for humans, elves, orcs, undead, and demons, as well as documenting wave structure, faction composition, faction visuals, tone, and battlefield impact.
• Current state: Functional

Technical Design Document (TDD)

• Organizes the project’s technical architecture and system-level implementation planning.
• This week included starting the document, defining the big-picture structure, and beginning to expand system details.
• Current state: In Progress

Problems Encountered and Solutions

No major production or technical blockers were explicitly documented this week. The main challenge was making the project documentation more coherent and better defined as the scope expanded.

Problem: The project’s design documentation needed a broader restructuring to keep features, scope, and supporting documents aligned.

Cause: As the concept expanded, the original documentation structure was no longer detailed or coherent enough to support the growing project.

Solution: A full GDD overhaul was started, scope was locked, content and systems lists were consolidated, and the LDD, WDD, and TDD were built out to better separate responsibilities across documents.

Current Project State

Turret Deck Builder remains in the foundations / pre-production phase, but it is now more clearly defined than it was the previous week. The project has a stronger visual target, locked production scope, a more complete feature and content breakdown, and meaningful progress on its world, level, and technical documentation. Gameplay systems are still in the planning and documentation stage rather than active implementation, but the project structure is becoming much more production-ready. Overall, the game is still early, but its design foundation is becoming significantly more solid and organized.

Next Week Plan

• Continue expanding the Technical Design Document with more detailed system breakdowns.
• Refine and complete remaining GDD sections to keep feature definitions aligned.
• Continue developing the LDD structure and wave/faction rules.
• Expand the WDD where needed to support faction identity and battlefield presentation.
• Keep improving project documentation so the project can transition cleanly toward prototyping.

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Time Spent This Week: 22 hours