Obsidian vault, 65 plain-markdown notes
Greenlight Vault — Indie Game Dev Studio in One Obsidian Vault (engine-neutral)
Run your whole game from design to launch day in one linked notebook: GDD, milestones, task board, bugs, playtests, devlogs and a full launch plan — shipped filled in with a complete sample project, so no note is an empty shell.
Look inside
Real pages and screens from the files you download.
About
Greenlight Vault is a ready-to-use Obsidian vault for solo and small-team game devs. Engine-neutral: it never touches your project files, it tracks the decisions around them. Works alongside Godot, Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Love2D or Bevy.
Unzip, open in Obsidian (free), and you have seven organised folders, twelve templates with identical frontmatter, and a dashboard listing open tasks by milestone, bugs by severity, unresolved playtest issues and marketing work due. Install the free Dataview plugin and those tables fill themselves; skip it and the static fallback lists still work. Zero plugins required.
Instead of a giant design doc: a linked GDD with pillars, core loop, four mechanics, two levels, cast, story, art and audio direction, a scope cut list and an append-only decision log. Production gives you four milestone gates with exit tests a stranger can verify, a WIP-limited task board, two worked sample sprints with hour budgets, a risk register and five filed bugs. Then playtesting (plan, three session logs, triage, survey bank), devlogs, and a launch section most templates skip entirely: store page checklist, press outreach method, wishlist tracker, T-90 to T+7 timeline, trailer shot list, twenty social prompts, pricing plan and a launch-day runbook.
Every note is demonstrated on an original sample project — Wickharbour, by the invented studio Tidewick Games. Keep it, or search-and-replace it out in ten minutes.
65 plain-markdown notes. No proprietary format, no lock-in.
Made with substantial AI assistance. All content original; no real game or studio names. Personal / single-studio licence.
What's inside
- 65 plain-markdown notes across 7 folders +
00 Dashboard.mdwith 7 Dataview blocks and full static fallbacks - 12 templates sharing one six-key frontmatter contract (type, status, tags, area, milestone, created)
- Design (14 notes): vision & pillars, core loop, 4 mechanics, 2 levels, cast, story outline, art + audio direction, scope cut list, decision log
- Production (11 notes): roadmap with 4 gates, task board, 2 sprints, risk register, definition of done, bug tracker + 5 filed bugs
- Playtesting (7 notes) and Devlog (5 notes): plan, 3 session logs, triage, survey bank, issue tracker, 3 sample posts, post + capture checklists
- Launch & Marketing (8 notes): store page checklist, press list method, wishlist tracker, T-90→T+7 timeline, 22-shot trailer list, 20 social prompts, pricing plan, launch-day runbook
- Studio (6 notes): handbook, weekly review, filled jam post-mortem, budget & time log, asset & licence register, contacts
- Bonus:
Launch-Checklist.html, an interactive offline launch checklist (129 generic items, ticks saved in your browser, exports to Markdown) at the top of the zip
FAQ
Do I need any plugins? No. Everything works in a fresh Obsidian install. The free Dataview plugin is optional; it only turns the dashboard's 7 query blocks into live tables. Static fallback lists sit directly underneath them.
Which engine is it for? Any. Nothing in the vault reads or writes your project files, and there are no engine-specific instructions. The only engine mention anywhere is a neutral line in the README saying it works with all of them.
Do I have to use the sample game? No. Wickharbour is there so no note is an empty shell. The README gives a ten-minute search-and-replace routine, and the vault tells you exactly which notes to delete and which to keep.
Is this just checklists? It is 65 notes: 368 checkbox items, yes, but also 85 tables, two worked sample sprints with hour budgets, three sample playtest logs with worked numbers, five filed bugs and an append-only decision log showing how each call was made and when to revisit it.
Can I use it for a commercial game or client work? Yes. The licence covers your own projects, paid or free, and paid contracts. You just can't resell or redistribute the vault itself.