What is a “level”? What do level designers do? We’ll look at the history of environments in games and their purpose in the overall structure of a game’s design. And we’ll briefly take a look at the structure of the course. Finally, we’ll setup Unity and familiarize ourselves with the pipeline of creating environment mesh and bringing it into the game.

We’re going back to basics of architecture this week and exploring components of geometric shape. We’ll talk positive and negative space, rules of perception, and how shape influences player behavior and experience.

Let’s get organized! We’ll learn about the structure of cities and buildings, how players mentally map and utilize space, and how you can create environments that communicate their purpose to the player.

It’s time to start planning an environment. We’ll talk about how designers study and research, gather reference, and create prototypes leading up to the creation of their levels. Learn to look at reference and pick out what evokes a sense of place and atmosphere. Creating immersion means getting your head in the world of the game.

A level is a story. We’ll learn about formal narrative structure and performative techniques. We’ll create beat diagrams, pacing, and examine how levels flow from space to space in support of narrative and character development.

How do you create spaces that are interesting to explore? We’ll look at path flow, valving, risk, rewards, creating mystery, player motivation and investment.

This week covers how risk versus reward, affordances, and denials can shape player choices.

This week explores how different types of spaces, shape language, contrasts, and story/environmental values contribute to the emotive design of a level.

Many games feature some form of combat. We’ll dive into cover-based shooter mechanics as a case study for how environmental shape interacts directly with player mechanics as well as take a look at what considerations go into creating multiplayer deathmatch style arena maps.

A design isn’t done until it ships. It’s a humbling experience putting your game in the hands of new players. We’ll look at the cycle of iteration and working with other departments to carry your design to gold. Also some final thoughts. This week we’ll finish covering a few more combat concepts in addition to valves, working with cinematics, and constructing a journey. We’ll conclude with a survey of various archetypes and how they line up.