Grand titles such as Halo, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and many more have acclaimed much fame in this day and age. Even my 73 year old grandfather has heard of a few. Naturally, anyone who decides to turn their passion for games into a professional career certainly has a few games on an equally grand scale in mind. Why not?

When I started entering the magic realm that is professional game design, things turned out to be quite different. Who would have thought that you don’t start at the top of the mountain, eh? Two weeks ago our professor gave us an assignment: Write a pitch document for a game. Curiously, he knew of his passionate students’ tendency to think BIG (and I really mean BIG). But never mind the funding, the manpower, and the time our great games would have required to build. After all, it was an exercise, a chance to get it “out of our system”. As an avid reader of fantasy books, including Trudi Canavan’s The Black Magician and The Malazan Book, and a loyal consumer of decision packed games such as Mass Effect, I was quickly inspired to come up with my own 25 million dollar-budget game. Staying modest.

And that’s what led to my very first (brilliantly crafted) pitch document:

Isolda’s Tale (GDD) (.pdf)

Keep in mind this was my first structured, written out idea, so there may be a lot of weight on the storyline and less on the actual gameplay. But I guess we all have to start somewhere.