GDD Trial
Prototype Docs
Trial Edition
Brief Description
What is this document?
This document is a GDD Trial (Condensed Game Design Document) for Elderon. It serves as a compact design portfolio showcasing our approach to game design, systems thinking, and a strong focus on User Experience (UX). Unlike a full, hundreds-of-pages GDD used by production teams for day-to-day development, this GDD Trial focuses on core pillars, unique mechanics, and overall design philosophy, allowing the project's vision to be evaluated in just a few minutes.
About the Game
Elderon is a dark, mature open-world action RPG deeply rooted in Slavic mythology. The primary objective is to survive and guide the protagonist through a rich, multi-threaded narrative within a harsh, unforgiving world where decisions carry real consequences, and logic and immersion take center stage.
World Structure: A vast, open world where map boundaries are defined by natural barriers (such as towering mountain ranges, deep canyons, and open seas), creating an organic sense of scale and isolation.
Key Inspirations: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the Gothic series, the God of War series, and dark fantasy tropes in the vein of Game of Thrones.
Key Design Principles
Historical Realism & Slavic Atmosphere
The game draws from the historical realities of past centuries and Slavic mythology, treating magic and fantasy as an intriguing supplement to a believable world. We emphasize cultural authenticity and atmosphere while maintaining a healthy balance between realism and player convenience—avoiding tedious micro-management (such as restrictive character hunger known from titles like Kingdom Come) in favor of smooth, rewarding gameplay.
Dual Gameplay Areas (The Road and The Wilderness)
The game world is divided into two complementary layers:
The Road & Quests: Traveling along main paths, exploring settlements, and focusing on the core narrative and numerous side quests.
The Wilderness & Survival: Venturing deep into the wild, where active planning, hunting, and survival elements come into play—acting as a rewarding, almost standalone layer of challenges that the player can engage with at any time.
Progression & Consequences
Player actions carry real meaning. Through a rich narrative structure and character development, the world reacts to decisions made, leading to tangible consequences in both the story and mechanics.
Target Audience & Market Positioning
Target Audience & Mature Tone
Elderon is strictly intended for a mature audience (18+), targeting fans of story-driven RPGs who appreciate atmospheric, dark tales inspired by mythology and folklore. The unfiltered, adult narrative incorporates visceral combat, blood, moral dilemmas, profanity, and themes related to sexuality and human nature. These elements are not cheap shock value, but an authentic part of a gritty, realistic world that enhances immersion and the atmosphere of Slavic dark fantasy.
Market Positioning & Progressive Wilderness Threat
Drawing inspiration from titles like The Witcher 3 and the Gothic series, the game's core unique selling proposition (USP) is a combination of a deep, nonlinear story paired with a living, lethal wilderness ecosystem. The deeper the player ventures into the unknown, the higher the risk: at lower levels, encountering a predator like a bear means certain death, forcing careful route planning and evasion. Only through character progression, experience, and better gear does the player earn the capability to successfully track, avoid, or confront the forest's greatest dangers—all without tedious, restrictive micro-management.
Gameplay Mechanics
Core Gameplay Loop
Gameplay in Elderon relies on a dynamic transition between safer civilization areas and dangerous, wild nature:
Narrative & Preparation (Settlements & The Road): The player navigates through main and side narrative arcs, interacts with characters in settlements, replenishes gear, and plans travel routes.
Travel & Exploration: Moving across the world involves uncovering secrets, encountering random events, and making decisions to stray from the safe path.
Wilderness Challenge: Venturing deep into the wilderness triggers an advanced survival and hunting layer. The player plans tactical actions, avoids formidable threats, or takes the risk of hunting.
Reward & Unique Progression: Success in quests and the wilderness yields resources and progression points. Furthermore, completing specific quests (main or side) can reward the player with a unique discovery tied exclusively to that mission—such as a rare combat skill or a unique potion recipe.
Combat, Controls & Threat Management
Controls & Combo Progression: Designed for PC (WASD + mouse) and PS5 (full gamepad support). As the character grows and uncovers new abilities, the player unlocks expanding combinations of strikes and spells, providing a physical sense of mastery.
Gritty & Unforgiving Combat: Encounters are direct and demanding. The absence of mid-combat healing means that proper preparation—better armor, weapons, protective elixirs (e.g., "stone skin" brews), or unlocking automatic dodge abilities in the skill tree—significantly helps rather than strictly forces victory.
Bounded Level Scaling: Enemies possess their own level ranges and scale alongside the hero only up to their maximum cap (e.g., a basic bandit within a 1–6 range stops scaling once the player surpasses it), which grants the player a deeply satisfying sense of growing power.
Respect for the World & Wilderness: At lower levels, encountering a powerful enemy in the wild (such as a bear) means certain death, forcing cautious stealth and evasion until the character grows stronger.
Economic Balance & Consequences
Controlled Economy: The game's economy is tightly balanced—the hero never becomes "too rich." Money and resources remain scarce and valuable, forcing careful calculation of every expense on gear, repairs, or elixirs.
World Interactions (NPCs): The world reacts to player choices, incorporating specific rules for interacting with non-player characters (including consequences for attempting to attack NPCs in settlements) to build a living, reactive environment.
Character Progression
Ability Evolution: Characters evolve through experience gained in combat, exploration, and survival.
Unlocking Capabilities: Leveling up grants access to new combat tactics, better gear, and abilities that allow for more effective survival in the harsh wilderness environment.
World & Lore
Open World & Terrain Architecture
True Open World: Elderon features a fully open terrain structure for exploration.
Natural Boundaries & Wilderness Rules: The world is not artificially blocked by invisible walls. Its boundaries are natural, deadly obstacles—primarily the dense, dark, and untamed primeval forest. The deeper the player ventures into the woods, the drastically higher the threat level rises (increasing the spawn probability of powerful, aggressive enemies or unique, lethal hazards).
Zonal Threat System: To help travelers navigate this unforgiving environment, we categorize the terrain into distinct threat zones. While the roads provide a measure of safety, straying from the beaten path—or venturing deep into the heart of the forest—requires meticulous preparation and combat readiness.
Setting & Historical Context
The Birth of Statehood: The game is set in a gritty, grounded early medieval world where powerful kingdoms do not yet exist—instead, they are just being born and rising from fractured tribal structures. Civilization is constantly carving its space out of ancient, untamed wilderness.
Cultural Authenticity: Daily life, architecture, social structures, and folklore reflect authentic Slavic history and traditions
A Fresh Approach to Fantasy and Mythology
Exploring Slavic Mythology: While global pop culture is dominated by Greek and Norse mythology, Elderon embraces the undeservedly overlooked, fascinating, and raw Slavic mythology, offering players an entirely new quality and fresh discoveries.
An Alternative to Tolkien-esque Fantasy: The game abandons tired tropes derived from Tolkien's works (such as elves, hobbits, or standard dwarves). We propose a new face of dark fantasy, deeply rooted in European and Eastern European atmospheres.
Magic and the Supernatural
Subtle & Mysterious Fantasy: Magic, curses, and mythical creatures are not commonplace elements of daily life—they are rare, terrifying, and deeply rooted in folk beliefs.
The Sense of the Unknown: Supernatural elements act as an intriguing and dangerous complement to a believable world. Encountering spirits, ancient entities, or rare magical phenomena inspires genuine awe and dread
Atmosphere and Tone
A Grasping, Unforgiving World: The atmosphere is heavy with tension, superstition, and the constant friction between a fledgling human civilization and the primeval forces of nature. Choices matter, and the lore reflects a harsh reality where survival depends on wit, grit, and respect for the unknown.
Art & Visual Style
Color Palette & Aesthetics
Gritty & Muted Tones: Elderon avoids saturated, vibrant colors. The visual style relies on earthy tones, muted greens, grays, and browns, punctuated by bloody accents and the flickering light of campfires.
Material Realism: Emphasis is placed on authentic textures—weathered wood, rough wool, rusted iron, and mud clinging to armor and pathways.
User Interface (UI / UX)
Minimalism & Immersion: The user interface is sparse and designed to minimize distraction from the game world. HUD elements appear dynamically (only when needed, such as during combat or inventory management).
Diegetic Elements: Whenever possible, information is integrated directly into the game world (e.g., equipment status reflected on the character model, or maps and notes styled as period manuscripts).
World & Bestiary Design
A Tangible, Muddy World: Locations—from small, makeshift settlements to deity-forsaken wilderness—feel authentic, lived-in, and burdened by the daily struggle for survival.
The Dread of the Unknown (Bestiary): Enemies (both humans and mythic entities) are designed with a focus on realism and harshness. Creatures rooted in Slavic folklore evoke unease through their unnatural integration with the wild, avoiding exaggerated or overly stylized shapes.
Narrative & Quests
Plot Hook
The game world has always been magical, but recently something has been causing it to "sour" and turn foul. Someone is pouring dark magic into the world, causing neutral deities and creatures to become aggressive while new, evil forces (such as witches) emerge to disrupt the natural balance through their actions and whispers. The main questline centers around the protagonist's personal secret, which is tightly bound to this dark process of world-wide corruption.
Storytelling & Dialogues
Non-linear narrative full of morally ambiguous choices, multi-stage quests requiring investigation, and in-depth conversations with motivated NPCs.
Audio & Music Design
Soundtrack & Inspirations
The primary inspiration for the soundtrack is the uncompromising musical approach seen in The Witcher 3, building a unique "Slavic denseness" using ethnic instruments (hurdy-gurdy, drums, archaic wind instruments).
Sound Design
Environmental realism playing a critical mechanical role in survival (listening to forest noises).
Business Model
Monetization & Post-Launch
Traditional premium model (Buy-to-Play, PC/PS5) with no microtransactions, followed by substantial story-driven DLC expansions.
Summary & Next Steps
Vision Summary
Filling a market gap with Slavic dark fantasy focused on uncompromising survival.
Trial Goals
Validating core systems on a selected slice of the game and preparing a representative demo for players and partners.
Next Steps
Content expansion, control optimization, and Alpha production.
We are crafting a world where every player's choice carries real weight. ElderMan is a return to roots, where survival is a brutal, Slavic lesson in humility
Arkadiusz
Game Designer & Director
