Level Design

Without adequate level design the player would get bored very fast, and since there is thousands of games in direct competition with yours then your going to want to keep players interested so they play your game more. What you will get out of this article is a, hopefully, more widened or initial knowledge of how to design your levels with varied environments and layouts.

Professional games such as Call Of Duty and Super Mario Bros have been hailed again and again due to their unmistakable brilliance and varied environments, that push the gamer to the limits put the to the test in every possible scenario of the game, which is what good levels or maps should do. Now let me explain the difference between levels and maps, levels are usually a series of environments in which the player progresses through one after the other normally following some sort of storyline. Maps are environments that are inclusive and offer the player to wander round freely in any direction; maps are often used for various multilayer modes. These definitions are not solid but are what is thought in general.

The more varied environments a player finds himself or herself in the less samey the levels will be to the player. If the levels are similar, then in most circumstances the player will get bored quite quickly, so the player needs to be thrown into some original and varied surroundings or else they may loose interest. A varied environment could consist of different backgrounds and sprite schemes, i.e. just changing the sprites with the same objects, and this would certainly give the player a more graphical aspect of the game to appreciate, but by doing it this way the level objects would essentially be the same. Different environments should contain unique objects that are only found in those environments, to give the game more of a trick.

For example in New Super Mario Bros for DS, the different environments not only looked different but also had their own features, such as: lava which you could fall in; jungle which had more ropes to swing on; snow, which had slippery ice that made the game a lot harder, volcano which literally summoned meteors right above you which you had to quickly dodge. So different environments should each have there own "thing" that defines them and excludes them from the rest, so not just a graphical touch, but twisting the gameplay also.

Players would usually want to change the environment or feel it's reaction. This is when we start focusing on making a level interact with the player as well as the player interacting with the level. Basically, as well as the general gameplay going on, the player needs to be able to interact with their surroundings such as pick up useful objects, or simply destroying parts of the environment. In some way the player should be able to change or modify the environment for their advantage or passage. This will give the game more than just it's normal gameplay, it will also give the player dynamic control of their experience. And to make the environment a responsive one, the player needs to know that the game knows what the player is doing. This includes rustling of bushes when a player walks through them, and then leafs could come out of the bush to show that the player is indeed in the environment rather than sitting staring at a computer screen. Wading through water is another graphically nice one, where when a player journeys through water: ripples, splashes and possibly reflections could be implemented.

All these features that I have described above are key, and if you follow my guide you should have some well-designed levels and environments. Lets look at the key points I've made in this article:

GOOD
 * Varied environments.
 * Dynamic, responsive, and reactive environments.
 * Environments that have unique twists on the gameplay.

BAD
 * Static, non-responsive, and non-reactive levels of all the same scheme of graphics.