Game Development: Three Level Design Tips to Improve Your Games
Hey, come on in, everybody! I'm Slushy, and today I want to talk to you about three important tips you can use to help improve your overall level design in your games that you make. It doesn't matter if your game is in 2D or 3D, or what your control scheme is, or what genre your game is. These three tips are universal and can be applied IMMEDIATELY to your level designs that you're building.
Tip #1: Keep the Player in Mind
It's easy, as a game developer, to get lost in the levels you're creating. They're really almost like little worlds that you are living in and creating at the same time. So, if you're up to your eyeballs in level design, dealing with flow, architecture, enemy placement, things like that, then it's really easy to forget to imagine what the player is going to experience when they see your level for the first time.
Tip #2: Show Your Game Early and Often
Part of keeping the player in mind is understanding the mind of the player. Game developers tend to get sucked into the game they're making and the development process, because there are hundreds of things that need to be managed when making a game. So, it's easy to forget the part where you have to SHOW the thing you're making to the people who are going to play it! You can either look directly over the players' shoulder while they play and see where they get stuck or if the game is too easy for them, or you can add analytics into your game to track events you define. You can then log into your analytics dashboard and review the data in real-time, and make adjustments to your level design as you go.
Tip #3: Build With Intent
Why are you building this level? Did you even think of a reason, or are you just trying to make content to fill your game? If you don't come up with a solid reason for making your level, chances are it will end up feeling uninspired or generic. Spend some time and come up with a very specific, exact reason for why you are building this level. This reason will then flow naturally into your level design, and your level will contain features that echo this feeling.
I think these three tips are great tips, because they're easy to do, they all fit together naturally, and overall, they help you create the best levels that you're able to. Check out the video, and please hit the like button and subscribe if you find this useful.
Thanks everyone. Happy designing, and be excellent to each other!
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