fire? How can the levels be best set up to encourage players to figure out her own strat-
egy for defeating the opposition? Knowing what sort of action your game will have and
how that action best plays out is critical to designing levels that bring out the best in the
action gameplay.
Exploration................................
What will players be doing when not in the heat of battle? Exploration is a major part of
many action/adventure titles such asTomb RaiderorSuper Mario Bros. Instead of just
providing a bridge between different action set pieces, if properly designed the explora-
tion can actually be a lot of fun for players. It is often hard for the design team to see this
after slaving away on a map for months. How much fun is exploring architecture with
which you are already painfully familiar? Always try to keep in mind that for players
experiencing a map for the first time, the thrill of exploring a new virtual world can be
quite stimulating. It may be important to constantly be showing your level to first-time
viewers or playtesters, and getting their feedback on whether they enjoy exploring the
level or not.
The designer must keep in mind how players will explore the level to know how
best to lay it out. What cool piece of art or architecture will players see around the next
corner? How excited or awe-inspired will players be on finding new areas? Making
exciting exploration a part of your game goes beyond creating exciting architecture for
players. It is also determined by how the level flows, and what players will have to do to
reach an exciting new area. Being dropped right into the middle of some nice architec-
ture is much less satisfying than having to navigate a large area of the map to finally
make it to an exploration payoff.
Part of making the exploration aspect of a game work is determining the flow of a
level. Will players need to explore several offshoots from a main, critical path, or will
they generally only have one way to proceed? Will the path players must take to com-
plete the level be obvious at first, or will they need to experiment and look around quite
a bit before they find it? Games that are very action-oriented will tend to put players on
456 Chapter 23: Level Design
As far back asSuper Mario Bros.
on the Nintendo Entertainment
System, Miyamoto’s games have
included exploration as a key
gameplay component.