Honestly something as easily accessible as a separate Discord server with each of its own dedicated channels for each department goes a long way for me, something like Google Docs I imagine is also good.
It’s less about the tool and more about how efficiently you can organize yourself, in my opinion. Sure some features can come to be helpful, but the fundamentals are always possible with just writing and basics.
Most of my projects are done solo, so yes.
Not sure how organized a team effort would end up but it depends who you’re working with, if you’re already using discord for communication it’s an easy way of keeping everything within the same tab (communication + documentation/organization)
Pretty handy, but ultimately there’s tons of tools, these just come to mind first, whatever you’re best familiar with will do.
Suggestions as per before are good. Trello is the best option for writing down notes (cards) and moving them into physical lists. It’s simple to understand and user-friendly. You can use lists as categories (e.g. gameplay, tech, art, levels, story), or as progress tracking (e.g. todo, wip, complete).
Jira is a more professional & comprehensive team tracking tool which you’ll see out in the professional field, but it’s still very useful for solo acts. Owned by the same company as Trello (Atlassian). I went through some hoops trying to figure out if it was free-to-use or not, and after them trying to hook me into a premium scheme, it turns out that I am now on a free plan so I think it’s in the clear!
The good part about Jira is that you can organise ‘issues’ (tasks or bugs) into ‘sprints’, which is a set block of time where your aim is to complete all the highlighted issues. You get to see everything you need to do by that deadline. Also, you can create ‘sub-tasks’ which divide a task up into smaller steps, which can be useful if checking things off lists really gets you goin.
Miro is another good supplementary organisation tool. Think of it as a giant collaborative whiteboard where you can write text, paste images, links, videos and draw notes. I like to use it to collate giant moodboards for inspiration for designing things.
Usually I start with what I plan to make, such as an update, a mechanic, etc. This is your base. Then you can just start writing ideas that you want to add. Once you’ve done so you can refine your bubbles to include the physical scripts or systems you will need to make. In mine you’ll see i’ve made a cooking mechanic, which has a few things such as components and scripts, so i know exactly how it’s gonna function/how im gonna make it.