So the past few weeks i’ve been primarily focusing level designing the game. and it’s been a lot of testing and sketching level idea’s for the game. This process got me asking a few questions regarding level design and it’s different aspects of it. seeing as level design isn’t primarily placing really large boxes within a space without thought and design. Within level design you firstly have to communicate and enforce the fundamental rules of the game design.
So where am i getting at here?
Well i’ve been looking trough different games and their level design, There are loads of great games out there that all differs from each other fundamentally but all the games have challenges to throw at you, speaking about games like, Half-Life 2, Call of Duty, Journey, Candy Crush and Need for speed. So racing, adventure, story, multiply and puzzles.
All of these types of games requires some sort of level design but the level design is quite different from the focus of the level design, we have (not limited to) narrative, puzzle or competitive level design. all of these focuses on different parts of what the level and what the level wants to convey.
So i’m wondering how the workflow and the design focus and tricks lay about for these different designs. Every game and every team may very well differ in how they choose to approach these diffrent approaches of level design.
Types of design
- Narrative design
This level design have a primarily focus on advancing the story within the game and enforcing it trough its level design. A great example of a game that utilize and enforce its narrative is Journey.
- Puzzle design
You gotta be smart to solve a puzzle, but i bet the one who creates the puzzle is a bit smarter. To create a puzzle requires a bit of understanding of the player and a know how on what the purpose of the puzzle is. at the same time the designer needs to ensure that said player is able to solve it and move on within the game.
- Competitive Design
Multiplayer games that challenges the player against each other is in need of compelling and fair in order to deliver a experience where the player wont feel mistreated. Some games solve competitive design by using a mirror match up in order to not give any participant a unfair advantage.
For Clouds Below we aimed at a Narrative Level design with pieces of platform design. During the start of the game we wanted to introduces the player to its basic mechanics as (Moving, Jumping, Bursting)
(Picture of the starting Zone)
Here we introduces the base mechanics. Where we at the same time reveal the world to the player. As mention earlier.
I look forward to disusing the subject further and to find out what approach works for all of the different types.
Until then.. Ta ta
AdamWrange 