Welcome to Digital Play Zone!

I'm Winn Liu. Level design is something that is extremely important in gaming, but is rarely talked about. I see most people talking about things like characters, mechanics, and art style. While those are important, level design is the base of your game, something that will shape the experience of your players.

Today we will give you a rough guide on creating levels in games. I also gave you some tips on how to create your very own levels.

What is your target audience and what are their likes and dislikes? This is something you must think about before designing your levels as different players enjoy different things. You can’t create a fast-paced platformer level for players who enjoy slow and meticulous story-centred puzzle games.

Another thing to consider is the story of your game if the environment in your level doesn’t have anything to do with the story, your game and story will feel like two separate entities. Thus when creating your level you must always consider what elements of your story can be included in the level design or gameplay.

This goes hand in hand with considering your target audience, as games have different styles. Are you creating a platformer game, a multiple-choice story game, or an action first-person shooter (FPS)? When you have considered the genre and style of your game then we continue with designing our game.

This is important. You can’t design a game or the levels without knowing your main mechanics or what your system can handle. Knowing what your system can handle beforehand can and will save you a lot of money and headaches by knowing what is possible and worth implementing, as well as what is not feasible and not worth the time to implement.

This is the step where you start to create the map and terrain of your level. Where obstacles will be, where you want your puzzles, and where your player has to go. While you are in this step of the process, remember to not put effort into the art of the game yet as implementing art now locks your options to the designs of your obstacles, characters and elements.

Now that you have a general idea of your map, it is time to playtest. Playtesting can help you figure out whether the flow of your level is how you want it to be. Whether your obstacles and puzzles are challenging enough while not being too difficult for the average consumer.

After going through the planning and playtesting stage for a few cycles. We can finally move on to implementing the story and art of our game. When implementing our story, we want the things happening in-game to have a reason to be there in the story.

As for the art, you want your art to follow the theme of your game as well as be concise so that the player will not get confused as to what they need to do.

This is the final step. Where you iterate and sand out all the kinks to your level and story. Further polishing on everything you have implemented, as well as removing things that don't really fit well in the level.

Here are some tips and tricks that I notice almost every game will implement in one way or another!

Just like writing, games have a pace and rhythm as well. It is important to keep this flow natural and consistent as changing the flow and pacing abruptly will jar the player.

While it is good to keep a consistent flow, this doesn’t mean that it's a hard rule. Abruptly changing the flow pacing especially in a shocking revelation moment can cause the player to get a shock that would otherwise be less effective.

Make sure to always keep things clear-cut and concise in your level design as you want players to be able to figure out where and what to do, not get lost for five hours and rage quit.

You should always thoroughly playtest this part of your world because as developers who work with the level almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we will think that our hints and layout for the players are self-explanatory. Having a second or third opinion can help you determine whether your map layout and hints are as obvious as you think.

Your game's art style can and will affect the atmosphere of your world. Thus it is crucial to keep your style consistent. This sounds extremely obvious, but as an artist myself, I know of many projects where I got carried away and kept adding things until the style was an amalgamation of many different styles.

Lighting and sound design can also be used to set the mood. Let’s say you’re making a supposedly haunted forest. You can keep the lighting to a minimum, maybe just a light amount from the moon and some reflective light from puddles. As for the sound, you can keep it quiet and occasionally add some random footsteps or ghostly noises. The player's imagination will create a better story.

Make sure your art, light and sound design correlate to the theme or the plot because these aspects are here to reinforce your plot or theme.

There is an art to gradually increase the difficulty or complexity of your game.

I find Plant vs. Zombies does this very well. At the beginning of the game, you are introduced to a handful of plants and zombies. Every 5 or so levels you are introduced to a new zombie with a new power that hinders your existing plants one way or another. Then after the introduction to that new zombie, you get a new plant that counters the zombie, furthering the complexity of your team building.

Another thing they include is special bonus levels every 10 or so levels, where the goal of the game is completely different from every other level, something like a minigame of sorts.

These two systems together allow the player to get an increasing sense of complexity and challenge while still making it easily digestible. Adding things gradually like this also makes it a new and refreshing thing to boost the interest of the player when things are starting to get stale.

It is good to sprinkle in rewards and feedback loops to reinforce that they are doing well. If you don't include any feedback loops or rewards, players will feel that they wasted time for nothing.

Sprinkling rewards like a new weapon, armour or vehicle can be one option. Another option is by giving them a score, this score will make players compete with themselves to get a better time.

Creating good level designs can be a difficult thing, but as long as you practice and keep these tips from today in mind, I believe you will be able to make an amazing level.

while these tips and tricks do have a purpose in games and have been proven to work, you should always remember that these are guidelines, not rules. If you think you can do something new that is better, go try it out! You never know if your idea could be a new hit if you don't try it.

Thank you for reading today’s blog, if you have any questions about game design, or even just have some stories to share, feel free to contact me! I would love to have a chat with you guys.