Zookeeper
Principle 1: excellent levels are guided by pleasure
To have a smooth and pleasant gaming experience, players should be able to clearly know where they are going anytime and anywhere. This can be achieved through Visual languages such as lighting or graphics.
Principle 2: excellent level design does not require text to tell stories
A good communication is like an incomplete circle. If the gap is too large, players may not be able to keep up with it. If the gap is too small, the game will be too simple, it will make the players feel boring. Using scene scheduling, this is an art of telling stories through the surrounding environment. It adds details for your stories, rather than relying entirely on straightforward expressions.
Principle 3: excellent level design always clearly tells players what to do, but never tells them how to do it.
Keep the guidance in the game concise and clear, and ensure that multiple available paths are provided for players. The implementation method is completely determined by the players themselves. It is important not to punish the players for their impromptu creations.
Principle 4: excellent level design can constantly teach gamers
Principle 5: excellent level design can always bring unexpected results
It is recommended that developers use a special loop playback method to make their games: learning, using, challenging, and unexpected. Use a design that does not fall into the conventional style to keep everything fresh, and avoid using the "roller coaster approach" to arrange the game pace-the so-called "roller coaster approach" is to use huge peaks and valleys along the way to comprehensively and steadily increase the intensity of the game. This approach is too predictable, and the fun of a game is created by uncertainty.
Game designers must strive to surprise gamers, but make sure these designs work. A game designer has a responsibility to reduce the risk of a game. If you put something at risk, you need to perform a gray-box test as soon as possible, which is absolutely crucial.
Principle 6: excellent level design grants players various capabilities
Real life is terrible, and games can escape reality and allow players to do things they cannot do in real life. In most games, players want to be a bad guy everywhere, by balancing player actions and results, such a game is a good case for gamers to fully feel their strength.
Principle 7: excellent level design includes various levels of difficulty, such as simplicity, medium, and difficulty.
A difficulty setting is pre-selected before the game starts. This method is very arbitrary and will completely change the player experience on the game. In contrast, it focuses on the balance between risks and rewards and provides various game directions for players of different styles and levels, from beginning to end, the game's replay value is being expanded-this is a very smart and effective design.
Principle 8: excellent level design is effective
Modular designers help you build effective game designs, says Taylor. A common problem with game design is that once a player completes a task, they seldom access the world of the completed content, unless they can get some incentives from the game, or this part of the game world becomes a part of other tasks. At this time, consider two-way gameplay, so that the artist's hard work will not just flash in the game.
Principle 9: excellent level design can create emotions for players
There are many creative ideas in architectural theory that can be applied to electronic games to create a certain emotional reaction. The role of spatial empathy is also very important. In a game, when a game scenario switches from a narrow, closed aisle to a wide and open space, the game maker makes a feeling of liberation between players. Adding a vertical arrow in the phase design can help to promote the creation of a sense of persecution, while placing a huge reward at the top of an obstacle in the game will arouse the feeling of hope rising in the player's mind.
Principle 10: excellent level design is driven by the game Structure
Electronic games are driven by interactions. Therefore, process design should be regarded as a "delivery system for gameplay ". This means that artists, process designers, and programmers must be put together so that they can work toward the same goal-communication between different professions is critical to the final success of the game.
10 Criteria for excellent level planning