Let's now talk about the components of level design. The typical components of level design include a combination of action, exploration, puzzle-solving, storytelling, and aesthetics. I'll discuss each of these. Starting with action. Action is the high intensity parts of the game. It can include things like running, jumping, climbing, fighting, and shooting. The action at a level may introduce new mechanics, types of action or intensity in action. But overall, the action needs to be compatible with the action across the game. Therefore, you need to understand how much action the level should contain. This is largely decided by the level designer based on the pacing of action within the level and across the levels. There are times when you want a frantic pacing of action, having the player at a heightened level of intensity. Other times you'll want to slow the pacing of action down to allow the player to catch their breath, think, and rest up for the next action sequence. Exploration is often what the player does between action sequences. Players often enjoy the act of exploring the game world. It helps the player feel they are immersed in a deep, lush world. It also gives the player a sense of freedom so they don't just feel like they're on rails, like on a theme park ride. Of course, exploration may run counter to the flow of the game. During an exploration, players may lose sight of the current goals and they may get confused on what to do next or where to go. Particularly if they're given a very large open world to explore. The level designer must often balance the flow of game play through the level where action sequences present a more linear flow of challenges to overcome and exploration offers a more non-linear flow. Levels may also include some form of puzzle-solving. Puzzles are often used as a method to advance through a challenge in a level or on to the next level. Puzzles offer a more intellectual problem-solving challenge versus an action challenge. Therefore, it taps into another form of fun, creating more diversity in game play. When designing puzzles in a level, the puzzles should be designed to reflect the story and the environment of the game. That is, the puzzles should not be arbitrary. They need to make sense and maintain both the player's suspension of disbelief and the lusory attitude. For example, the puzzle design and uncharted games do a really good job at this. You must also design the puzzle so that you're providing information in the world to solve it. Nothing is more frustrating to a player than getting to a puzzle challenge that they're not able to solve, they can get stuck and not know how to proceed. Consider giving the player clues or bread crumbs on how to solve the puzzle if they need it. For example, you could add aesthetics things in the level to help solve the puzzle, such as a trail of blood leading to a certainty spot, or a glimpse of an adversary escaping through a false wall. In the worst case, you can add a hint system that players can engage optionally when they get stuck. That way players that really want the challenge and consider hints cheating can forego them. But more casual players that start to get frustrated with the puzzle and just want to proceed, can use the hint system to take a baby step forward to solve the puzzle. As discussed in the storytelling lecture, there are many ways to tell stories and games. For example, through cutscenes and sequences, through dialogue and quest, and of course, through the design of the world itself. In level design, you must decide what portion of the story is being revealed within the level, what has come before the level, and what the player needs to know before they can proceed on to the next level. The architecture, characters and interactions that take place within the level are often your primary tools for storytelling. For example, what can you tell the player through the visuals of the level. In the game portal, the true story of the game begins to be revealed to the player through the graffiti on the walls, often in tucked away corners. The player starts to realize that the story that they're being told by the primary voice in the game may not be telling the actual story, creating a sense of uncertainty and foreboding which drives the story forward. Once again, this is primarily done through the visual design of the level and not more traditional techniques like dialogue. Of course, you can also use cut-scenes and cut-sequences within a level for storytelling. Often these are preset animation sequences that are triggered a key locations within the level. Or they can just be small moments where you take the camera control away from the player and add some dramatic music or sound effect. When this type of storytelling happens, it gives the player a little break from being immersed in the action, exploration or puzzle-solving of the level. It helps them realize that they have made progress toward a goal in the game. The aesthetics are how the level looks and sounds. The aesthetics are often shared between the art team, sound team and the level design team. In designing the aesthetics of the level, it's often a balancing act between beauty, which is an aesthetic issue, time to create, which is a production issue, rendering speed, which is a technology issue dictated by the hardware and game engine, playability, which is a game play design issue, and adherence to the game story, which is the story design issue. The aesthetics are also extremely important in guiding the player. The aesthetic should help the player consciously or unconsciously know which way to go and which way not to go. We'll talk more about this later in this discussion. The goal of the aesthetics is to immerse the player within the game world. Often to achieve this, you are using smoke and mirrors, that is, often you need the player to believe something is there that is not. You want them to believe they are immersed in a large functioning game world. But often you're using special effects and visual tricks to fake it. It's very similar to what you do in a movie set. If you have ever taken a backstage tour on a Hollywood set or a place like Universal Studios or Disney Hollywood studios, you've witnessed this. It is what the camera shows the player that matters. For example, you want your player to believe they're in a city, even though it may just be a facade of buildings with a background of the city skyline painted in the distance. In the two videos that follow, Mark Brown discusses two of the components of level design that we just spoke about as part of the game makers toolkit series. In what makes a good puzzle, Mark talks about the puzzle creation and level design. In how level design can tell a story, Mark presents a case study of how modern games integrates storytelling through their level design. Please give both of them a watch for a deep dive into level design.
