Play Spaces and Level Design

Welcome back to my blog!

Today I will be going over what we learned in class about play spaces and level design. To recap really quickly, game designers design the gameplay rules and level designers design how a player is confronted with them.

Now, level design is putting theory into practice. The theory of what I have been talking about in my blogs for the lectures in my class is applied to the structure of a level. The golden rule of level design is to be consistent. The mechanics need to stay the same. If the player needs skills for a level that you have not taught yet, don't make them do it.

Incremental learning in level design for example, would be if you find a new weapon, learn a new ability, or from a designers perspective, find a new mechanic in the game, the player would then be taught how to use this new mechanic. It is important to break down the core components of this new mechanic and make sure the rules are understood. Proceed to challenge the player with their new mechanic by putting obstacles that challenges their skill of the new mechanic.

For example, in our game Aeolus, we have a complicated mechanic of flying and shooting so we will make sure that the flying is well understood before the player is given the ability to shoot. We will further break down the flying mechanic by giving them an easy tutorial of flying from one point to another with no obstruction and when they are comfortable, add some obstacles to their path from one objective to the next.

The same would apply to the shooting mechanic, we will teach them to shoot at a static object that will not be shooting back, then when they are comfortable with that we will add the obstacle of the turret shooting back. From here we would start to add any other mechanics that the player needs to learn.  

What do you teach players? Well you need to teach them the physical rules and limitations of the environment. The abilities the player's in-game character has is also important to teach the player. The enemies behaviors are also important to teach the player. Most importantly, the game's reward system is critical for the player to know or else they do not know what they are playing for.

There are three types of levels, linear, semi linear, and non linear levels. Linear levels are good for their consistency, story development, and pacing. The learning curve is also good. Semi-linear levels are good because they create the illusion of freedom where there is enough freedom for players to feel they are authoring their experience. NonLinear levels are great to give the player maximum control and a sense of gameplay ownership. Some problems with each type of level would be linear constrains player's freedom, semi-linear leaves players to their own devices at inappropriate times. Non-linear levels are extremely hard to test and that can give many loopholes in gameplay logic.