Zephyria

Game Design Document for an aerial adventure-exploration game: in a world drowned under an ocean of toxic clouds, the Veil, humanity survives on floating islands that the player travels by flying on a Souffleur.

Context

Personal project from April 2026, at the pre-production stage: the design document is written, the pitch deck, the prototype and the visuals are planned. It follows an earlier GDD, "Éolia", written the same morning, and reuses its market study.

What I did

The whole GDD (gameplay, world, level design, art direction, sound, tech, production), a market study and a brief on the legal framework, and the document's build chain.

Links

• Zephyria
• Éolia (earlier GDD)

The document

GDD v1.0 split into 20 modular parts (docs/gdd/parts/), compiled into a single document by a pandoc script:

Part	Content
Game design	Vision and pillars, core gameplay, world and narrative, progression and economy, level design
Production	Interface and UX, art direction, sound design, technical specs, roadmap
Studio	Business model, market analysis, team, budget, risks
Framework	Intellectual property, regulatory compliance, appendices

Gameplay loop

Micro (30 s – 2 min)   Observe → Pick a direction → Fly → Discover → Interact
Session (20 – 45 min)  Explore a zone → Story fragments → Sanctuary → New ability
Macro (12 – 15 h)      6 regions → Sanctuaries → The truth → Descend into the Veil → A choice

Sheet

Genre	Aerial adventure-exploration, third person
Target engine	Unreal Engine 5
Art direction	Watercolour cel-shading