Level Design Basics — Part 1. Pre-Production

As the title suggests, this article will cover the basics of the much wider subject of Level Design.
I will only touch upon the basics and some common ideas of Level Design, each of these ideas go much deeper, and I highly recommend researching each of these ideas if this subject is of interest to you.

I will talk about the common workflows of a Level Designer, the theory behind designing a level, as well as some advice for beginners and designers striving to get their start in the industry in Ukraine.

That being said, as with anything design-related, a lot of this information can be viewed as subjective, and serves as a reference or starting point, NOT as a set of rules to be followed religiously.

A lot of these guidelines vary from project to project, and breaking them sometimes serves as a great gameplay variance or subversion of expectation.

Introduction — What is Level Design

So what is level design in a few words?

Unfortunately a lot of enthusiasts wanting to start this journey have the common misunderstanding of what a level designer does, possibly after watching a dozen of “Speed Level Design” videos on Youtube, and thus confusing Level Design with Level/Environment Art.

To easily distinguish the two, think of level design as the chassis of a car (functional), while level art as the body (visual).

Level Design is more about functionality and gameplay, whereas Art is about a coherent, attractive and usually realistic image.

Here’s a quick comparison to make it clearer:

So I’d define Level Design as The functional, gameplay-focused planning and creation of game spaces.

Functional: Designers focus on the usability of the space, and each addition to the level during the blockout phase has a specific function.

Gameplay-focused: As explained above, levels are designed to be fun, and comfortable to play in. If the blockout also looks pretty, that’s pretty much just an added bonus.

Planning: Most of the design process happens before the designer opens up the editor, this is emphasized by giving all sections of a game space a design intention.

Creation: Because obviously, designers also need to create the actual spaces in 3D (or 2D), and have a bit of technical know-how to set up the AI and scripted events in the level.

Level Design General Workflow

Just like the design concept as a whole, workflows vary from project to project, and even from one designer to the other.
I will try to generalize and talk about the design workflow broadly, in a way that fits most of the projects I’ve worked with, which can hopefully be used as a start that you can then adapt to your needs.

The level from start to finish lives through the following stages:

• Level Idea: a general idea that serves as a core pillar of the level
• Documentation: one of the most important stages, helps affirm and communicate the design intentions of the level
• Blockout: early prototypes to see how the initial idea plays and feels
• Integrating other departments’ work: adding art, sound, narrative etc..
• Iterations/Playtests: improve the level based on feedback
• Polish: add small bits and bobs that don’t affect the level much, but give it a bit of a pop.

In this part of the article I will mainly be talking about the first two.

Level Idea

As with a lot of things, all levels start with an idea, it can be a gameplay mechanic, an environment setting, a narrative beat or simply a cool red door that opens diagonally.

These ideas can either come spontaneously (usually on the toilet, during a shower, or right before falling asleep, a.k.a the only times when you can’t write them down), or deliberately, which is sitting down and having a think, to come up with an idea that will start the process or solve an existing problem in an in-progress level.

Finding ideas deliberately is often challenging, mostly due to the Blank Page problem often striking writers, artists or even designers.

To fight this, a set of goals and limitations must be set during the very first phase of level creation and design, this set will eliminate most ideas (which are not compatible with the main goal of the level) and give the designer a greater focus for exactly what is needed to accomplish said goal.

A lot of these goals can be easily created by a couple of possible questions:

• What is the purpose of this level?
• What should the player feel when starting/playing this level?
• Is there a new mechanic that needs to be introduced to the player?
• Is there a narrative element that needs to be communicated to the player?

Asking then answering these kinds of questions immediately gives the imagination a base image to work with, and luckily for level designers working with a team is that these questions have likely already been asked and answered by other departments by the time the level design process starts, but we will look into an example where the designer isn’t as lucky, and needs to come up with everything on their own.

Now as a fun exercise, I’ll answer the questions above and see what we have to work with:

• What is the purpose of this level? The player just left the ‘tutorial dungeon’ and is ready to start the game, the first level must show the player the dangers of the world he just entered.
  Result: The level must include a few basic enemy AI’s the player must fight against.
• What should the player feel when starting/playing this level? The player just left an enclosed area, so to contrast this he must feel free, getting rid of the claustrophobia that dominated the atmosphere during the tutorial dungeon.
  Result: The level must have a large vista of the open world
• Is there a new mechanic that needs to be introduced to the player? Yes, the driving mechanic must be introduced to the player.
  Result: The level must have a vehicle, and a blocked passage that cannot be passed without the vehicle.
• Is there a narrative element that needs to be communicated to the player? Yes, the player gets a call from an ally requesting assistance, and asks the player to head to the large radio tower.
  Result: The level must have a view of the radio tower as a landmark, guide the player there, and have a very clear path that’s at least going towards the general direction.

After getting these answers to the above questions, the level layout and flow can be imagined a lot easier. Here’s how I imagined it for instance:

Obviously two level designers will have drastically different visions of this level, but the point is we’ve passed the Blank Page problem and already have something to work with.

Apart from setting these goals for the level, it’s also very important to have an environment setting in mind.

As level designers we don’t usually do any work towards the actual environment (this mostly goes to level/environment and lighting artists like I mentioned before), but we absolutely MUST have an idea in mind before starting to think about the layout.

The setting of the level can drastically change the shape of the level, the width of the player paths, accessibility between different parts of the level, size and shape of combat arenas, and so on..
So despite not being artists, designers should absolutely rely on this information when planning a level, and must stay up to date with the art team’s work on this level (if working in a team), or come up with the setting of the environment (if working alone on a portfolio project).

Another useful exercise to avoid the Blank Page problem is to simply switch off and stop trying to come up with an idea. Instead, start looking for inspiration, references, cool locations on google maps, cool levels that other designers have created and shared online, and most importantly, play a LOT of video games.

I find that while playing I passively start thinking about how levels were created, see a cool idea that I can use to create something different. This does sometimes ruin the experience of gaming, but I think that it’s a good trade-off for becoming a better level designer (especially when doing this with mediocre games that have great levels).

Quick tip: When creating a standalone project for a level design portfolio, a common mistake people make is to confuse a gameplay mechanic or a level idea with a game pitch. Instead of creating documentation for a level and the mechanics used there, people start thinking about the game as a whole and describing it in detail.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the two, especially when working from scratch in commercial engines like Unreal or Unity, my advice would be to start working on a couple of levels for existing games, for instance ones that offer a level editor out of the box (Hammer/Source Editor (Valve games), Far Cry Arcade Editor (Far Cry), Creation Kit (Elder Scrolls/Fallout).

The purpose for using those is to completely stop worrying about how a game plays, and instead focus on how to demonstrate and/or use the existing mechanics as gameplay ingredients to help create the level.

Quick note that this is great for practicing documentation and level design in general, however it is usually a frivolous advantage rarely available in actual game production, since level design usually starts way before any mechanics are created and completed, the most you can hope for is a working prototype you can base your level on, which will DEFINITELY change over time, so you’ll also need to learn to adapt your level based on those changes.

Documentation

Level documentation is usually gathered in a single document titled LDD (Level Design document), it’s a little document that holds all the information about this level, is created and updated by the level design owner of that level, and is used by all departments that have any work done for said level.

The format of the document varies from project to project (sometimes even a single project can have different variations of the same document), but the included information is generally the same.

The content usually includes things like:

• Overview of the level: setting, purpose, goals, main gameplay element, narrative outline. This is an abstract short summary of the level as a whole, to give a quick idea to anyone reading the document.
• Level Flow: a beat-by-beat description of all actions that the player will or might go through during this level. This gives an in-depth view of the gameplay in this level, and gives the ability to break the level up into smaller, more-manageable pieces that can be created or scripted separately. It also gives the ability to understand the difficulty, flow, and gameplay variety of the level; if the level has repetitive gameplay it will be immediately noticeable in this section of the document.
• Gameplay Flowchart: This diagram will showcase all possible player actions, triggers, events and so on...
  This is extremely useful for finding and resolving any edge cases that might crop up (which is crucial in open-world games), as well as give another overview of the flow and difficulty of the level. It also really helps figuring out the best way to script the level in a modular and flexible way.

• Bubble Diagram: (or node graphs) are a great way to extremely quickly plan and iterate on the abstract shape and size of the layout, before starting to draw detailed floor plans and placing covers. The nodes in this diagram represent a playable area or gameplay beat, the size of the node represents its intensity/size/importance (depending on the project’s documentation format), and the lines between them can represent the corridors connecting them or an action that the player needs to do before moving forward.

• Top-down layout map: After creating the bubble diagram and making sure all level goals are met, a 2D map is drawn of the level. Usually this is done over a few iterations as well, going from macro shapes (general layout and ‘room’ sizes), to meso (gameplay ingredients, AI composition) to micro details (player covers, AI patrol paths).
  This map needs to be kept updated in the documentation, even after the documentation is done and the level starts to take shape in the editor. This will allow all departments to be synced up on work done on the level, without having to jump into a build and check the level changes everyday.
• Location references and history: information about each section of the map, this can include the setting of the environment, some abstract lore that supports the gameplay in this section, mood references, random environment ideas and anything that the Art and Writing team need to know. This is the first step in communicating your ideas about the level to other departments, to make sure that everyone is synced on the main idea, and everyone’s work is aligned based on the information written in this section of the document.
• Production Budget: A.K.A shopping list, this section must include anything that isn’t already in the game that needs to be added specifically for that level. This can be a gameplay mechanic, a cutscene, a phone call, an art asset, etc.This is extremely useful for managers to assess the amount of man-hours needed from other departments to assist in creating the level, and helps discover production blockers as early as possible which, in theory, would be avoided by the time the level designer starts producing the level in-editor.

Rewards

As just mentioned, the documentation of a level contains a lot of information, and there are a lot of choices and decisions that the designer needs to go over when designing a level.
I would like to talk about one specific aspect of documentation, one that I feel gets overlooked a lot by newcomers to design: rewards, their purpose, and their different types.

Purpose of Rewards

When talking about video game rewards, one would immediately think about “finish task X, and get Y money as a reward”. However in level design, this is a much more complex subject.

So apart from looking at rewards as a payoff or giving the player the feeling of accomplishment for engaging with the game, we as level designers can use it as a tool, for example to entice the player’s desire for exploration.

To better understand this, here’s a quick example: Why do players tend to stave off main paths, and instead go to all side locations instead? Would players have the same tendency if they knew that the side paths have NOTHING to offer them?

Just to reiterate, in this example we are definitely not talking just about health or ammo or money, as this only fits into a very specific genre of games, however ALL video games need to have some sort of reward for player’s engagement and exploration.
Which is why we have many different types of rewards to choose from, when constructing levels.

Reward Types

In the book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, the authors Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman said that game rewards can be split into the following types:

• Rewards of glory: gives the player a sense of achievement by completing a difficult challenge, while this is not a physical reward that is “given” to the player, a lot of players feed on this feeling and it keeps them playing while the game does its part by giving harder and harder challenges.
• Rewards of sustenance: these are the most standard rewards in arcade games and older FPS titles, you complete a challenge — you get an item (health/ammo etc..).
• Rewards of access: things like keys, access codes etc.. These aren’t rewards by themselves, but they give the player access to locked areas that can contain rewards of various types.
• Rewards of facility: rewards that give the players new abilities, including abilities that change the player’s movement, which can also mean that they get access to new locations (reward of access).

The above types describe rewards that directly aid the player in overcoming obstacles and prepare them for upcoming challenges.

However, as I mentioned before, in level design there are other ways to reward the player, rewards that don’t directly affect the player’s character, but can also entice the player and give them more reasons to explore, try new things, and overcome optional challenges.

These rewards can even be level spaces or gameplay experiences.

Salen and Zimmerman talked about these kinds of rewards as well (reward spaces), and split them into the following:

• Reward Vaults: this type of reward space is the most obvious, where overcoming a challenge gets the player into a “vault” that can have any of the gameplay rewards listed above, or it can be a gameplay management opportunity like save rooms. An example for this type of reward is the rooms that you start and end a level inside of in Left 4 Dead, where the players get a chance to have a breather, get health, ammunition and an option to switch their weapon arsenal (as well as get a checkpoint for the campaign).

Another example is “Resistance spots” in half-life 2, these are supply caches that are left by the resistance for the player to find throughout the game, marked with the iconic lambda symbol, and they entice the player to be more attentive and explore their surroundings looking for these supplies that will help them with upcoming challenges.

• Rewarding Vistas: these are a somewhat overlooked reward type in games, but are my personal favourite.
  These vistas don’t add anything to the gameplay, but are actually quite important for the pacing of the level (and the game in general), where you give the player the chance to have a breather before moving to another high-intensity beat, by giving them an interesting location, animation or landmark to admire before moving forward.
  These rewards, for instance, are heavily used in Half-Life 2 as a way to have a rest between gunfights.

• Meditative Space: meditative spaces are an extreme version of rewarding vistas, the difference is that these spaces are used exclusively as a tool to balance the pacing of the game. These spaces are safe spaces that the player recognizes and can immediately relax once entering one. They are usually distinct from the other areas of the game, for example have specific lighting or decorations to assure the player that they can have a break and prepare for the next intense beat. An example of those spaces can be found in the elevators in Portal, which serve as a break between two puzzles, so that players have the chance to mentally recover from one puzzle before starting another.

• Narrative Stages: Also a very common type of reward, as many games give the player who complete certain challenges, skill tests or optional exploration a piece of narrative as a reward. Narrative rewards can ALSO be split into many different types (cutscenes, logs, environment storytelling, landmarks etc..), but for the sake of this article I will only cover one, which is narrative spaces. Narrative spaces are sections of a level that serves as a buffer or preparation of an upcoming challenge, an example would be to give the player a landmark that shows them the location of their goal. This is similar to reward vistas where players get a chance to have a break between high intensity beats, but with this narrative space they also get an idea of what’s coming up.

Practice

Reading articles and watching videos on Level Design is great and all, since it gives a lot of information to base your intentions on, but it will do nothing compared to actually sitting down and creating levels.

If you, reading this, are thinking about tapping into this subject, I highly suggest taking a pen and paper, and starting work. Beginning with the documentation is a great first step to create something you’ll be excited about.

Try to come up with new level ideas, reverse-engineer your favourite levels, redesign the weaker levels in your favourite games. These are all very fun exercises that will teach you more about design than any other designer could.

Conclusion

I hope the first part of this article has been informative to those who have been wondering how levels are created, and where they could start themselves. In the next part, I will talk less about theory, and more about practical approaches to use when actually constructing a level in a level editor or game engine.

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