Explorations in Level Design Part 3

At this point, I have developed a good set of basic vocabulary to decipher, read, and understand level design and its fundamental concepts in creating immersive environments and how shapes communicate meaning to us. I have now mentioned a few times how environment tell stories and affect us emotionally. In order to dive into this deeper I referred to a few different texts and online sources such as Christopher Totten's book, lectures on level design from GDC and the course on level design from CGMA by Emilia Schatz.

Drawing from space theory in architecture and urban design, we could also apply the same ideas of how to categorize spaces in video games and the emotive tone they strike upon us.

Prospect Space - wide open space, feelings of loneliness and vulnerability, no privacy and space to hide, lots of potential threats. However, wide open spaces also inspire freedom and choice.

Narrow Space - Cramped space, limited space to run away if danger is near, claustrophobia, but narrow space could also be comforting like home.

Intimate Space - Neither too open or too small, enough space to move, to flee and to look out for potential threat and how to act to threat, the feeling of control.

Depressed Space - Space that is lower than the space around, feeling of being exposed and the loss of power. Players generally tend not to independently choose to go into depressed spaces if they are not being forced to.

Elevated Space - Space that is higher than the surround space, creates more perspective, more information, player can spot threats easily and harder for enemies to spot them, feeling of power and control, more visibility.


Specific geometry also create certain emotions in humans such as:

Square/rectilinear - stability, safety, affordance, useful

Diagonal/triangular - threat, danger, sharpness but also dynamism and potential energy

Round - friendly and comforting

Level Design Workshop: Invisible Intuition: Blockmesh and Lighting Tips to Guide Players and Set the Mood, David Shaver, GDC 2018

This doesn't mean every pointy object is threatening nor every round shape is friendly but it is how these shapes are used in contrast with each other and in the context of the situation/story the game is in.

Just like trying to find the correct emotional tone in storytelling through writing and cinematics, the space that the story is taking place in is also just as important. Level designers have to marry the emotional tone of the narrative beat with the appropriate type of space and shapes that would help communicate those feelings. This is achieved through many different strategies in level design such as geometric shapes, image/spatial composition, types of spaces, paths/districts/nodes/landmarks. Together, these different elements create spaces that can even understood as character archetypes such as hero, mentor, ally, shadow, trickster, etc. For example, what would a trickster space look like? Trickster keeps the protagonist on their toes, they are naturally mischievous. A space that could represent the trickster could be a space that plays with the current path the player is on, reversing them and taking them on a non-linear route, it is playful but not confusing. Specifically the trickster archetype is of interest of mine due to its relationship to queerness and at this point I finally started to see where level design could potentially intersect with queer theory. I intend on exploring this trickster/queer relationship to space in much further detail this upcoming year as I progress in my thesis. This concept of using character archetypes to define spatial identity has helped me as a level designer to understand how to design spaces that are appropriate to the emotional tone in the current narrative of the game.

Overall, I learnt an incredible amount of knowledge in the last 12 weeks and I intend on continuing this journey of learning and practicing more level design. Unfortunately I couldn't not elaborate on as many details due to the process of condensing as much of that information as I could. In the next blog post, I will actually go through two levels I sketched out in detail. I made 10 levels in total but I chose two to showcase one that was successful and one that wasn't.