XV - Game Level Design

There are many things a game needs to be successful and level design plays a huge part in how well it does. You can have the best idea for a game ever, but if the levels don’t fit well within the game then it will fail. Here’s a list of the core features a game requires:

1. Concept
2. Environment
3. Beginning
4. Ending
5. Goal
6. Challenges between the player and the goal
7. Reward
8. Defeat or failure system

Story is another area that is fundamental, but not overly required in every game. Although it can be the driving point behind certain genres of a game, many games work well without any story or theme at all. However these games that have no storyline could have had one, a story can drive the player through the many different levels of a game. 

If you think of chess and battle chess, battle chess is the same concept with a story build into it, whereas chess and computer games like battle simulators allows the players to generate their own narrative and make their own AAR (After Action Report) into a custom story, if the player is thinking of this during the game, it can change the way he plays to make his AAR more exciting. 

The challenge in level design needs to increase as the player progresses through the game, but in each level the player needs to almost immediately recognize what he needs to do, whether or not what he does is the correct way to complete the challenges set in motion does not matter as long as they don’t end up sitting back thinking ‘I don’t know what I need to do next’ as this leads to frustration and boredom. 

Each game has its own set of rules that govern how everything works. Whether it follows the real world rules of things like gravity absolutely, partially or not at all can change how the player thinks of the game state. If each level in a game has different rules then the player can get confused, or will take a longer amount of time figuring out how the items in the world will work, this extra amount of time will eventually seem pointless to the player over the course of the entire game as they relearn the rules set within the game state and they will lose interest with the extra work required to play.

It’s also a good idea to have multiple paths that lead to the final destination, each providing its own tools and challenges as this gives variety to the player resulting in replayability and extra enjoyment for the player. This also works within a single level, if there are a couple of different methods of completion then the player can pick and choose on how to play the game, giving the illusion that the player is the playing the game their own way.  These tools may not all be directly compatible, but as long as they work under the rules set in the game, then the player will understand how to use them. 

The rewards of a level can be as simple as progression to the next level, but I think it is wise to give the player something extra as I believe that getting something as obvious and expected as progression looks like laziness on the developers part. Getting a bonus achievement in a game makes the player feel like they have accomplished something difficult and this will make the player feel better about themselves and thus the game. Points are generally the easiest way to reward a player, this can be things like the score or the amount of items received but it can include things like the type or quality.

I found this week’s reading a bit overly exemplified, yet still interesting. The way it broke down the stages I think is going to help me in designing any game that I will ever work on, whether I use that process or not, it still got me thinking about how I should structure the design of a level.