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Principles for Good Level Design

 https://youtu.be/iNEe3KhMvXM?si=af1jkk7Cryh8BE84

Dan Taylor

Games Developers Conference 2013


1. Fun to navigate

The player should always know where they should be going, use visual language. Mirrors Edge does this using red-coloured objects to show you your path. 
Sometimes add confusion to navigation. Favela in MW2 is a confusing level with no clear path through that makes it tense

2. Do not rely on words

Types of narrative:
  • Explicit - narrative directly told to the player through written content, for example
  • Implicit - player discovers narrative from the environment
  • Emergent - player creates narrative in their mind
Mise-en-scene is the art of telling narrative through the environment
Player choice creates emergent narrative as they fill in the blanks themselves

3. Tell the player what to do, but never how to do it

Give information to the player only if necessary
Create nebulous objectives, that still encourages and rewards player experimentation

4. Constantly teach the player something new

Fun in games often comes from pattern analysis. Learning patterns and using your knowledge of them to solve problems
Learn > play > challenge > surprise

5. Surprise the player

Disrupt paradigms. Dead Space 2, the player expects to find many aliens on the Ishimura, but it's completely empty, until a while into the level

6. Empower the player

Deliver the fantasy. Visualise the player's influence

7. Make levels easy, medium, and hard

Allow player to choose their difficulty by playing the game
Risk vs reward. Hard path with good rewards or easy path for ok rewards
Racing games with narrow and difficult shortcuts. Allows selection of difficulty dynamically
Dishonored creates a difficulty system by allowing the player to choose lethal or non-lethal

8. Efficiency

Maximise use of resources, be it studio staff, console limitations, or budget
Modular design. Create small section that can be used many times, thereby teaching the player more
Bi-directional gameplay. Change the gameplay on the way to an objective to the game on the way back. Halo does this effectively.
Levels can be non-linear, but keep the linearity relevant

9. Create emotion

Spatial empathy. Tight corners limit player's fov, creating tension, claustrophobia. Twisty rooms create confusion and panic. Wide open spaces make it more epic force players to look at vista to create a sense of wonder. Verticality creates a feeling of persecution by attacking from above. Vertigo by scaling mountain. Create sense of reward by putting treasure on top of a tall building.
Start with the desired emotional response, then work backwards.

10. Design driven by mechanics

Books let you imagine extraordinary things, films let you see extraordinary things, video games let you do extraordinary things

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