Level design is the meat and potatoes of game design. Once the core mechanic is worked out and the art direction begins to take shape, level design is where all of the careful design considerations express themselves. When designing levels it's important for the aspiring game designer to remember, the player isn't your opponent, it's better to think of them as a consumer of your experience. You, as the designer, must guide them from being a total n00b to a master of your game. This is done through excellant level design. Keeping a player engaged with your game long enough to obtain mastery requires that they don't become bored. This is most often done by introducing a steady flow on new features.
It All Starts With Features
The word feature can have a very fuzzy and broad definition. It can be used to describe anything that distinctly stands out in your game; be it an element in the H.U.D. (heads up display) or a particular classification of feedback, such as a shower of particles accompanying the points received by destroying a brick in arkanoid. When considering level design it's helpful to look at features that fit into the category of use and challenge. Features that the player uses: abilities, equipment, characters etc and features that a player must overcome: enemies, obstacles and terrain.
Choosing Features
When coming up with features it’s often helpful to have someone there to cook up ideas with. When doing this, keep an open mind and say yes to everything. It’s easier to weed out irrelevant or impractical ideas with a nice long list to pick through. There is a short, genral check list you can go through when evaluating features.
Emergence
Once you start creating features you may find that they cause unexpected things to happen. Usually, the player interacts with your features in unexpected ways. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is one of the primary reasons to test your game early and often. Once identified, the emergent gameplay can be accounted for and actually used in your level design. This can been a huge boon, it's like adding a new feature for free!
Level and Progress Design
Once you have your features chosen it’s time to start planning your levels. The concept of levels has become more and more loosely defined over the past few decades. In the early years of gaming a level was a definitive and contained thing and common throughout games across genres, from Pac Man to Tetris. As time went on and technology improved the idea of game worlds came into existence. Games like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and World of Warcraft (WoW) don’t have the same kind of level as the classics.
WoW builds levels into the player character. Here a player’s power and development dictate where they can go in the game world. In GTA levels are even more abstract. Here, the game’s narrative is segmented into missions and areas of the map open up after a certain missions are completed. In this case it’s hard to define what a level is at all. Is it the individual missions? Is it the map areas? What about the secondary missions scattered throughout the game? How do they factor into the concept of levels?
Level Design with Feature Learning in Mind
One useful way to think about levels is in terms of your feature set. Every feature in your game is something a player has to learn how to interact with. A designer should be wary of overloading a player with too many features at one time. If a feature adds a new way of interacting with the game environment it’s often best to introduce that feature in a way the is contained so that players can identify and gain an understanding of the feature in isolation before having to use the feature in conjunction with other game elements.
Portal is a textbook example of incremental feature introduction. In portal, the player navigates a series of test chambers using a portal gun. The gun doesn’t shoot bullets, it shoots portals. A portal appears on a wall where it was aimed and shot. The player enters through one portal, and comes out the other. Although the portal gun is used in almost every level of the game the player isn’t given one right away, rather at first, they are part of the level. Even after the player gets a gun it’s really only half a portal gun. A first time player has to play nearly a half hour before they get the full portal gun that can shoot both sides of a portal. Throughout most of the rest of the game the player is guided through each level, and in each level the player is either taught something new, or something they already learned is reinforced.
Level Designed with a Difficulty Curve in Mind
Another useful way to think about your level design is in terms of ramping difficulty. This goes back to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of Flow. Once a new feature is introduced it can be combined with features that were introduced previously. Throughout this process the player is learning how to interact with the elements provided by your game.
Practice makes perfect. After the basics of a skill is mastered making huge leaps in improving that skill is not uncommon. Take the skill of riding a skate board. Once learned it's not hard to learn it well enough to get around. If you want to learn how to do tricks, like an ollie, that will take more practice. If you plot this progress on a chart, where the x axis is time spent and the y axis is level of skill you’ll end up with a series of S curves. Over time, with more practice, you will face a diminishing return on improvement. Take this into consideration as you plan you levels. The goal is to keep the player inside the flow channel, avoiding frustration from overloading the player with overly difficult challenges. When introducing features and mechanics, it’s okay to make the level overtly easy if that’s what’s needed in order to communicate how the feature works. While the skill curve looks like an S the difficulty curve should look like a mountain side.
Progress Design
Level design can be thought of holistically as progress design. In fact in games like WoW and GTA this title may be more apt. As a designer creating the learning progress of your players. It may be helpful to get your list of features together and draw out a difficulty curve then decide where you want to place what feature on the difficulty curve. This will help decide which features to introduce when. Once your features are chosen and a progress curve is plotted, the level structure and design can be derived.
It All Starts With Features
The word feature can have a very fuzzy and broad definition. It can be used to describe anything that distinctly stands out in your game; be it an element in the H.U.D. (heads up display) or a particular classification of feedback, such as a shower of particles accompanying the points received by destroying a brick in arkanoid. When considering level design it's helpful to look at features that fit into the category of use and challenge. Features that the player uses: abilities, equipment, characters etc and features that a player must overcome: enemies, obstacles and terrain.
Choosing Features
When coming up with features it’s often helpful to have someone there to cook up ideas with. When doing this, keep an open mind and say yes to everything. It’s easier to weed out irrelevant or impractical ideas with a nice long list to pick through. There is a short, genral check list you can go through when evaluating features.
- does this feature play into my core mechanic?
Features that make it into your game should enhance the core mechanic, not distract from it. If you are making a racing game, you should think carefully before adding a puzzle mechanic. It could be really cool, but it also has huge implications for the player's experience. - does the feature take away from the challenge?
Making a new weapon or ability that nullifies or trivializes challenges can make the player feel powerful (always a good thing), however after using the feature for a little while the game may become too easy. One way to balance this to either making the challenges more difficult. For example, If you are making a platformer and decide to add a double jump feature, make the gaps that must be cleared wider. Alternatively you can create a trade off when using the new feature. If for instance, you add a jet pack to your platformer, make the player slower when wearing it. This way the feature is a tool to use in certain situations and doesn’t break the game. - Is this really a feature at all?
changing things aesthetically or superficially (changing the skin on something or making a series of enemies that behave in the same way) isn't adding a feature and can in fact betray the player’s trust. When a player sees something new they will approach it with caution and curiosity. If they find it’s the same as something they have encounter before they will feel cheated. It is possible to make a sweeping aesthetic change to accompany a shift in narrative, but even in this case, it's a good idea to tweak the features behavior, even slightly.
Emergence
Once you start creating features you may find that they cause unexpected things to happen. Usually, the player interacts with your features in unexpected ways. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is one of the primary reasons to test your game early and often. Once identified, the emergent gameplay can be accounted for and actually used in your level design. This can been a huge boon, it's like adding a new feature for free!
Level and Progress Design
Once you have your features chosen it’s time to start planning your levels. The concept of levels has become more and more loosely defined over the past few decades. In the early years of gaming a level was a definitive and contained thing and common throughout games across genres, from Pac Man to Tetris. As time went on and technology improved the idea of game worlds came into existence. Games like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and World of Warcraft (WoW) don’t have the same kind of level as the classics.
WoW builds levels into the player character. Here a player’s power and development dictate where they can go in the game world. In GTA levels are even more abstract. Here, the game’s narrative is segmented into missions and areas of the map open up after a certain missions are completed. In this case it’s hard to define what a level is at all. Is it the individual missions? Is it the map areas? What about the secondary missions scattered throughout the game? How do they factor into the concept of levels?
Level Design with Feature Learning in Mind
One useful way to think about levels is in terms of your feature set. Every feature in your game is something a player has to learn how to interact with. A designer should be wary of overloading a player with too many features at one time. If a feature adds a new way of interacting with the game environment it’s often best to introduce that feature in a way the is contained so that players can identify and gain an understanding of the feature in isolation before having to use the feature in conjunction with other game elements.
Portal is a textbook example of incremental feature introduction. In portal, the player navigates a series of test chambers using a portal gun. The gun doesn’t shoot bullets, it shoots portals. A portal appears on a wall where it was aimed and shot. The player enters through one portal, and comes out the other. Although the portal gun is used in almost every level of the game the player isn’t given one right away, rather at first, they are part of the level. Even after the player gets a gun it’s really only half a portal gun. A first time player has to play nearly a half hour before they get the full portal gun that can shoot both sides of a portal. Throughout most of the rest of the game the player is guided through each level, and in each level the player is either taught something new, or something they already learned is reinforced.
Portal walkthrough
Watch the first ten minutes at which point the full portal gun is obtained.
If you really want to see great level design in action watch the whole thing.
Or better, get a copy an play it. You can get the game through steam.
Level Designed with a Difficulty Curve in Mind
Another useful way to think about your level design is in terms of ramping difficulty. This goes back to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of Flow. Once a new feature is introduced it can be combined with features that were introduced previously. Throughout this process the player is learning how to interact with the elements provided by your game.
Practice makes perfect. After the basics of a skill is mastered making huge leaps in improving that skill is not uncommon. Take the skill of riding a skate board. Once learned it's not hard to learn it well enough to get around. If you want to learn how to do tricks, like an ollie, that will take more practice. If you plot this progress on a chart, where the x axis is time spent and the y axis is level of skill you’ll end up with a series of S curves. Over time, with more practice, you will face a diminishing return on improvement. Take this into consideration as you plan you levels. The goal is to keep the player inside the flow channel, avoiding frustration from overloading the player with overly difficult challenges. When introducing features and mechanics, it’s okay to make the level overtly easy if that’s what’s needed in order to communicate how the feature works. While the skill curve looks like an S the difficulty curve should look like a mountain side.
Progress Design
Level design can be thought of holistically as progress design. In fact in games like WoW and GTA this title may be more apt. As a designer creating the learning progress of your players. It may be helpful to get your list of features together and draw out a difficulty curve then decide where you want to place what feature on the difficulty curve. This will help decide which features to introduce when. Once your features are chosen and a progress curve is plotted, the level structure and design can be derived.
Conclusion
Level design start by picking your features. Try to chose features that enhance your game. Level design can be thought of as designing the players progression through your feature set. Lead your players through the game, from n00b to master.
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