Sixteen prompts, in the order they actually fill. Answer what you can, skip what you can’t, and we’ll print you a clean grayscale handout to redraw weekly.
≈ 12 min16 stepsOne A4 page out
All answers stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Press Cmd/Ctrl-P at the end for a printable PDF.
• 01 — Header
Name it. Pitch it in twelve words.
Compression is diagnostic. If it doesn’t fit in twelve, the game isn’t focused enough yet.
• 02 — Header strip
Engine, platform, runway, target.
Four short answers. The runway field is the one that bites. Be honest about months you can actually fund.
• 03 — Pillars & Blunders
Three pillars. Three blunders.
The most important row on the page. Three words is brutal compression — naming what the game isn’t is the rarer half, and the half that protects scope.
Three words. Defended in front of a hostile reviewer.
Three words. Excluded options are excluded scope.
• 04 — Design
What does the player physically do?
Verbs, not genre nouns. “Place tile, watch enemy path, redraw line” — not “exploration, combat, loot.”
One short clause each.
How long after the input does the player see consequence?
• 05 — Engagement
Why do they come back?
The fantasy at a specific moment. The hook. Why the player retries after their first failure.
Three short answers. The tone field is the one that excludes things — cosy excludes tense, brutal excludes playful.
• 07 — Production
When, what, blocked by, kill condition.
Five fields. The kill condition is the one most likely to be left blank, and the one that matters most. Write the observable signal that would tell you to stop.
A frozen pre-mortem. “No wishlists after 90 days of Steam page live.” “Players don’t retry after first failure.”
• 08 — Distribution
Three comps, where they gather, the wedge.
Three comps — positioning needs triangulation. The wedge names the specific thing those three comps don’t do.
Format: Game name / 92% pos · 12k reviews
A specific community in a specific place. “Steam tag for boomer shooters” — not “hardcore gamers.”
What this game does that the comps don’t. Mechanical or tonal — never marketing language.
• 09 — Commercial
Pricing, second dollar, price band.
The “I’ll figure out monetisation later” answer is the answer that runs out of money in Q3. Engage with the maths now.
• 10 — Timing
Steam page live before demo.
Wishlists are the single most leverageable artefact in indie marketing in 2026. Every month the page isn’t live is a month of accumulation lost.
• 11 — Scope
First Move and Endgame.
First Move is the smallest version a stranger would still recognise as this game. Endgame is the version where every IS pillar is fully expressed. The gap between is the roadmap.
Smallest version still worth shipping. Two short lines.
Biggest version. True vision. Two short lines.
• 12 — Cuts
What came off the board this week?
Most templates only track additions. The Game Board tracks subtractions, because the act of cutting is the work. An empty Cut row after four weeks is almost certainly a project where nothing has been honestly subtracted.
• 13 — Core test
The cheapest test you can run this week.
Walk back through your Draft cells. Pick the biggest one closest to launch. Write the cheapest possible test that would move it to Finalised. One sentence.
• 14 — Date
Today’s date.
The Updated field. Fill it in by hand on every redraw — a printed Game Board with a six-week-old date is a dead document.
All done
Print your Game Board.
Preview the handout, print it, and tape it over last week’s. Redraw on Monday.
Tip: in your browser’s print dialog, set Margins → None and Background graphics → On for the cleanest A4.
Preview · The Game Board · grayscale A4
RETCONIC.COMUpdated —The Game Board · One-Page GDD
Untitled game
DraftFinalised
A 12-word sentence that says what this is.
DraftFinalised
Engine
Platform
Runway
Target Launch
Pillars
this game is
Blunders
this game is not
• 01
Design
DraftFinalised
What does the player physically do?
Core loop
Min 1 → 60
Win / Lose / Progress
Most-frequent
Feedback delayInstantShortLong
• 02
Engagement
DraftFinalised
Why do they come back?
Player fantasy
Return hook
MotivationIntrinsicExtrinsic
Session length
Why retry
• 03
Feel
DraftFinalised
How it looks, sounds, reads on a Steam capsule.
Visual
Audio
Tone
• 04
Commercial
DraftFinalised
How does this make money — and a second dollar?
Pricing model
Second dollar
Price band
• 05
Production
DraftFinalised
Scope, schedule, and kill condition.
Riskiest unknown
Content-complete
Tracking milestone
Blocked by
Kill condition
• 06
Distribution
DraftFinalised
Where they already gather. Three comps. The wedge.