What is Level Design?

Level design, also known as Environment design, is the area that designs, creates and organizes the setting, and does not necessarily create the art of the assets.

Its function is to elaborate the form of the level, obstacles, landscapes, roads, castles, rivers, lakes, sea, atmosphere, and immersion within the game, aiming at the progression and the entire path that the player will go through.

Level design must be well thought out because it will influence the entire player experience, such as fun, difficulty, and immersion, which will be influenced by the level design.

Creating prototypes is very interesting and important because you will be able to have a vision and an idea of the experience from the prototype, in addition to being able to have an objective view of the level, so that in the final creation there will not be places that, for example, the player will go through in vain, and that place is there just because it is, so that the player will explore and not have nothing to be explored, just wasted time in an empty place, so thinking about the exploratory factor is very important.

Flow is very important in level creation, making the player feel immersed in the game, awakening the explorer within the player and always capturing the player's attention to points of interest.

The landscape must be built with great attention, a path that leads nowhere makes no sense, so a lot of attention is needed in the creation of the environment in all types of games and taking it a little further for open-world games, it is very important to consider the atmosphere of the place, to have appreciation points for landscapes and game art is very interesting, animator Hayao Miyazaki does this a lot in his animations, moments that are called Ma "emptiness" is a space, time, or pause, and Hayao Miyazaki incorporates this magnificently in his animations leading the viewer's attention to appreciation, so considering the appreciation factor is very interesting because it makes the game much more artistic, interesting and immersive.