Level Design Paradigms: Tools in a Kit

Before I start, I should point out that, likely, much of what I’m about to say is at best, obvious, and at worst, something everyone already knows; but, in the off-chance that I manage to catch someone who didn’t know this already, that would mean this was somewhat useful.

A few months ago I began a new design document draft. Whenever I try to think of new game ideas I throw bits and pieces of my favourite games together more or less to see what sticks. As I develop the concepts further, bits and pieces of the games that I threw at the wall begin to fall away. The idea is that what remains is more or less original, and, hopefully, fun. I feel like it’s worth explaining this method, because it requires viewing level design from a very different angle.

The Trap

When I talk about level design paradigms, what I am referring to is the framework for your level. Is it open world? Is it a side scroller? Is it linear? Of course there is some crossover between all level design, but there are critical differences that cannot be ignored or underplayed. A linear level at the end of the day, isn’t open world by definition.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the trap of design paradigms, which is the tendency for designers, developers, publishers, players, and just about anyone else for that matter, to view a design paradigm as an end, rather than a means. This is a dangerous trap to fall into, because if the end goal of your design process is to create an open world level, then no matter what, you’ll work towards that level, regardless of external factors. Do you have enough money to make an open world game? Is open world the right fit for the game you want to make? Will it even be fun? Do you have time to finish it? Will it be big enough? When you view the paradigm as an end, you surrender your control over the course of design, for better or worse. I figure more often than not this mistake will strangle a game in it’s crib, but, probably not before some money and time has been sunk into it, which you will not be getting back.

The Tool Kit Solution

There is a way around this issue. This way isn’t perfect, but it more or less mitigates your risk of being railroaded into making something you can’t or shouldn’t bother, finishing. Say you have a limited amount of time and money, and an idea. If you think of your design paradigms as tools in your box, a means to an end, rather than the end itself, then you can pick and choose what you use, when you use it, and how you use it. You maintain flexibility, and the best part is, you really don’t give anything up when you do it. In my opinion, this is really the only way to do things.

The Tool Kit in Action

So, imagine you’re me; making your new design document, the one I mentioned before. You want to make a new, fun action RPG. You’ve been playing a ton of Dark Souls 3, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Path of Exile recently. You just witnessed the glory that is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in person for the first time. You think, hell, all these games have something fun to offer. What would happen if you threw them all together in a blender? What kind of monster/comic book super hero of a game would you get?

So, you do as I do, and throw science at the wall to see what sticks. I wanted an ARPG, that had smooth, visceral combat, like Dark Souls. I wanted a game that encouraged and rewarded exploration, like The Witcher. I wanted a game, that not only challenged your wits and your prowess in combat, but your brains, and problem solving, like The Legend of Zelda. I wanted a game that gave players free reign to succeed, fail, play by the rules, or break them, whenever they wanted, like Path of Exile.

Those who are more seasoned in Game Design will already notice some of these goals clash with one another. That’s ok, it’s part of my process, now that I have everything I want in one place, I start to distill this mash down into something more potent. Hopefully, when all is said and done, I’ll have an idea for a game that could be fun.

1 - First thing; combat. In this case, combat is more or less something you need to commit to fully. I love Dark Souls combat, and I think, apart from a few balancing issues, that From Software has come up with probably the best formula for ARPG combat. Still there is some flexibility here.

Image taken from the Path of Exile Newbie Guide: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/590251

I love Path of Exile’s mind numbing array of choices in terms of active abilities; from conjuring bolts of lightning, to instantly teleporting behind, and striking any number of targets, to blowing up entire screens worth of enemies without even having to click on them. Dark Souls and Path of Exile combat can work together, they don’t fight one another, so I keep them. At this point, you make the important decision to discard the rest. Its no longer important to the level design, and trying to include too many things will simply confuse and dilute your gameplay when you do finally get to implementation.

2 - Second thing, Exploration. Here is where the rubber really meets the road. In terms of exploration we have a few options, the Open World, or the Metroidvania. Why Metroidvania? Because, again, Dark Souls; It’s a metroidvania game; one that gets very little credit for being a metroidvania. What defines this paradigm? A large, interconnected world, composed from smaller, usually hand-crafted scenes and linked together to flow and to control player movement.

Super Metroid: Credit to Nintendo and the Maker of this Guide Map

On my document I would go with metroidvania because it still rewards player exploration, but its orders of magnitude less expensive than Open World and it's easier to scope control and implement. Your level never goes to waste because every part of a metroidvania level plays a part, contributes to the flow, and is hand crafted. In this way, you control how much content you make, and have a lot more assurances that the player will see and use that content.

I typically use the example of Novigrad in The Witcher 3 as the emblematic problem with Open World. I should note here that I love The Witcher 3, I think that despite the problems I'm about to point out it is still one of the best open world games out there, and I had a lot of fun playing it.

The Free City of Novigrad

Novigrad, is probably among the largest cities ever realized in an Open World game. I love it. It’s rich; It feels lived in, there are all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore and discover, but here in lies the problem. Novigrad clashes with the Witcher’s objectives system. The witcher compels a player to explore as part of the process of completing objectives. This isn’t a problem on it’s own, but it is a problem when the other, arguably more important part of this gameplay is absent. Players should be compelled to discover objectives, through exploration, not just the other way around. In the Witcher 3, when you near points of interest they appear on your map. This means out in the wilds of Velen or Skellige, you have to explore at least somewhat to find bonus loot. In Novigrad however, the points of interest are so close together that within 20 minutes of playing through the story in Novigrad, you’ve basically got everything highlighted on your map.

See the problem?

At that point, you no longer even need to explore, you simply set a waypoint and a dotted line guides you there, and all that beautiful city you might have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man hours building is wasted. The player just glides right by it.

Now I do have to be fair, open world can be done better than this, and Breath of the Wild is a perfect example of that. A harsh contrast to the cramped quarters of Novigrad, Breath of the Wild takes advantage of immense, empty space, and, though your map is a similarly powerful navigation tool, nintendo was careful to gate how much information is available to you, and when. Thus, visual markers, like climbing a tower to locate a landmark, or scaling a mountain to get a lay of the land, become actual parts of gameplay. That’s awesome.

Awesome

Now there is one thing both these games have in common. They were in development between 3 and 5 years, they had roughly 300 person teams, and their budgets were well into the tens of millions of dollars. For me, an indie dev working with friends and fellow students, this is simply beyond my reach. Open world requires time, money, and a mind numbing amount of content that I simply couldn’t deliver given my resources, so it’s off the table.

3 - Puzzle solving is a quick one. When I say puzzle solving I generally refer to the fetch quests, exploration puzzles, and spatial puzzles often presented by Metroid or Zelda. This pretty much fits perfectly into the design already because I’m already using Metroidvania, so I don’t dwell on this part much.

4 - Player agency is the last big one. Both Dark Souls and Path of Exile have powerful character builders, but I think Path of Exile has the better one. The way you navigate the passive skill tree is pretty unique and I think it’s miles better than simply allocating points to specific stats.

PoEplanner.com: One of numerous web based resources for planning Path of Exile Character Builds

A tree makes you think not just of the final product, but the composition of a character, and it makes the leveling process just as important as the end game. It also encourages replayability, because no two characters will build the same, or play the same. The tradeoff is that a new player can quite easily brick a character, but they could do that in Dark Souls already. I choose the Path of Exile character building. I drop everything else.

So, to recap, the ideas that have stuck are; Dark Souls combat with POE-like active skills; Metroidvania level design and composition; Zelda-like spatial and exploration-based puzzle solving, and a Path of Exile-like degree of player agency and freedom in terms of build choice and gameplay diversity. I think, i’m getting to somewhere cool with this document, though there is obviously a lot more work still to do.

Wrapping Up

So what’s the point of all this rambling? Well, think about this. I’m a student. I have basically no money, a free version of unity, and five or six friends interested in working with me, all of whom, are essentially in the same place. This informed my decision. My available resources, in effect, point out to me, the tools that I can, and should be using at the time. If I were a published AAA developer with a 300 person team and a hundred million dollar development budget, it’s not just likely, but probably a certainty, that I would have made different decisions. Maybe open world would have been the go to, for one thing, or maybe the final length of the game will be different, and so on so forth.

If I set out from the beginning, wanting to make an Open World game, then immediately, my design would have flown out of scope. I would have fallen into the trap I mentioned before, and I would have let my design paradigms railroad me into doing something I couldn’t, or shouldn’t do. Instead, I used the paradigms as a tool. In doing so, I preserved, and continue to preserve flexibility throughout the design process.

I can sum things up with these points:

Your Design Paradigms are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Don’t be afraid to use them, and don’t let them control you.

Your limitations are real. Gear your games around what you can do.

If you do, than you are far more likely to come up with something that is fun, and something you can actually finish and eventually get to market.

Starting somewhere familiar is not a sin.

There isn’t any point in reinventing the wheel. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t differentiate, but A Game of Thrones owes its existence to The Lord of the Rings. Just because someone else did something doesn’t mean you can’t do it in your own way. Don’t copy other works, don't rip off someone else, but learn from them.

I really do think these are points that are worth keeping in mind when you work on your next project. I hope that at least some small part of my rambling helps you, if that’s the case.