Level and environment design – Guiding the player

Let’s take a quick break from the technical aspects of the project and talk about some game design concepts again before moving on to the features we’ll use to build the game level.

Having the GDD is great, but it doesn’t provide any concrete visuals for communicating the theme and style of the game. Art can quickly elicit emotional responses and build excitement that is hard to compare to the written words of a GDD. For example, have a look at this concept art created for the Outer World game:

Figure 4.7 – Original “Outer World” environment concept art

You should immediately have a sense of what it would be like to be a player in this environment! Games are often marketed early on with an artist’s rendering for visualizing concepts to gain interest and excitement for a project. They are also used internally to inspire the production team to build...