Exploring level design
Since Chapter 5, Query with Line Traces, which was related to our dodgeball game, we added a few game mechanics and gameplay opportunities, as well as some audio-visual elements, all of which were handled in this chapter. Now that we have all these game elements, we must bring them together into a level that can be played from start to finish by the player. To do that, let’s learn a bit about level design and level blockouts.
Level design is a specific game design discipline that focuses on building levels in a game. The goal of a level designer is to make a level that is fun to play, introduces new gameplay concepts to the player by using the game mechanics built for that game, contains good pacing (a good balance of action-packed and relaxed gameplay sequences), and much more.
To test the structure of a level, level designers must build what is called a level blockout. This is a very simple and boiled-down version of the level that uses most of...
