World and levels › Level breakdowns
How to study someone else’s level
Know first: Layout: loops, forks and dead ends, Pacing: tension and rest
Playing a good level teaches you less than you think: you remember how it felt, not how it was built. This page is a method for taking a level apart on paper. You play it, draw it from above, mark the path, the fights, the gates and the landmarks, time its pace, and write down what works and why. At the end you have one page that explains the level, and a habit of looking at levels the way their designers did. The breakdowns in this part of the book are made this way.
Goal
Before: a level you liked and a vague memory of it, “the bridge was tense, the ending was great”. After: a study. It is one sheet with a plan of the level from above. The plan shows the critical path and the side paths, the fights, the gates and the landmarks. Next to it are a graph of the pace and a short list of what the level does and how. The Level Design Book, a free online handbook of level design, describes a good study the same way. It finds strengths and weaknesses, considers how players usually behave, and compares the level with other levels and games.
Try it
A small made-up level, a harbor at night, studied in the order of the steps below. Switch from the bare plan to the paths, then to the marks, then to the pace graph, and read what each stage tells you that the one before did not.
The plan alone is a set of rooms. The paths show that the way from the pier to the exit is 81.1 m long, while you can walk 172.4 m in all. More than half of the level is optional, and the study has to say why. The marks show what happens where. The fights grow from 2 enemies to 4, and one enemy hides by the bridge. A one-way drop takes the player down to the dock, an optional area with the biggest fight. The pace graph shows one playthrough of 11 minutes, by a player who took both side paths. It has a quiet start, a peak on the dock at 6:30, a calm climb back and a light ending. The level and the playthrough are made up for this page.