8 items tagged with level design
How to Design Great Metroidvania Levels | Game Design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAHXYfP38CA
You can use a few simple techniques to design a great metroidvania: draft the map as a bunch of connected rooms; develop the timeline of key events, bosses, and locations; plan player abilities and how they fit into the world; make individual rooms; test, test, test, modify, and test again.
Game Designer Critiques The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MC8QQaV1zI
game analysis Link to the Past level design ARPG core loop
The first half of this video looks at A Link to the Past's game design: the core pillars of exploration, combat, and puzzles intersect heavily. Each item works for multiple core pillars; the core loop is explore, fight, puzzle, and get an item; it teases secrets you can't reach; unlocking items minimizes places to backtrack; and the game is based around interaction with the world, not necessarily the core gameplay.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's dungeon design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouO1R6vFDBo
game analysis Link to the Past level design linearity open world
Link to the Past uses a combination of linear dungeons, open dungeons, and hybrid dungeons. Linear dungeons build tension and direction, hybrid ones allow some exploration, and open dungeons allow you to explore and solve them in any or short orders if you know what you're doing. Many dungeons loop back, giving the feeling of being bigger than they are, and one uses 3D space.
Making Levels With the Super Mario World Method: Skill Themes, Part 2
Super Mario World CCST level design skills inversions difficulty
A look at momentum and inercepts in Super Mario World, and level design tool: inversions, such as having a power-up will block a player. Mixing these with intercepts creates different scenarios that require different levels of skill to pass.
The Super Mario World Method: Understanding Skill Themes
Super Mario World CCST level design skills
An analysis of the skill-sets in Super Mario World, which is a composite of an action and platformer game. Levels focus on one genre - platformer vs. action - and on one skill theme - precision vs. speed. You can use these ideas to create genre-focused levels that shift between skill-sets within a level.
The Super Mario World Method: Using Evolutions and Expansions
Super Mario World CCST level design
An in-depth look at challenges and expansions in level design; how you can evolve different types of challenges; how difficulty is subjective, not numerical; and practical examples of how to construct a level with different challenges that evolve into a final cululative challenge.
How to Design Levels With the Super Mario World Method
level design difficulty balance Super Mario World CCST
An introduction to the challenge, cadence, skill-theme system Nintendo uses in Mario and other games. You design challenges, evolve them into qualitatively different types, expand them into quantitatively bigger challenges, and ultimately combine these tools together to craft interesting, balanced challenges for players.
Roguelike Level Design Addendum: Static or Procedural?
https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2019/03/roguelike-level-design-addendum-static-procedural/
roguelike procedural generation level design
A brief discussion about the pros of static vs. procedural maps in roguelikes. Both have pros and cons, there's a spectrum in the middle, and roguelikes can benefit from a mix of different types.