Level Design: Processes and Experiences

by Christopher W. Totten

In this book, veteran game developers, academics, journalists, and others provide their processes and experiences with level design. Each provides a unique perspective representing multiple steps of the process for interacting with and creating game levels – experiencing levels, designing levels, constructing levels, and testing levels. These diverse perspectives offer readers a window into the thought processes that result in memorable open game worlds, chilling horror environments, computer-generated levels, evocative soundscapes, and many other types of gamespaces. This collection invites readers into the minds of professional designers as they work and provides evergreen topics on level design and game criticism to inspire both new and veteran designers. Key

Genres: Game Design, Games

408 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2022

Reviews

[Josh Whittington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very different from An Architectural Approach to Level Design, with some more personal essays and a broader scope. Some are less useful than others but there’s a lot of interesting perspectives and by covering a lot of topics relating to level design it provides a good launching point for further research in the areas that grab your attention. Essays are split into four categories - Experiencing Levels, Designing Levels, Constructing Levels and Testing Levels - and topics covered include procedural generation, playtesting and often over-looked aspects of the design process. There’s lots of examples from the authors’ own projects which are particularly interesting - I enjoyed Heidi McDonald’s breakdown of her first attempt at level design, and Joel Burgess detailing parts of Bethesda’s process for planning open worlds was great because open world design is something I have always been curious about.