World and levels › Level design
Wayfinding: how players find the way
This lesson is about how a player finds the way through a level and what helps. Light and openings pull you toward them, shapes say “you can go here” or “you can’t,” and tracks, coins and arrows lead to the goal. We’ll sort cues from quiet to loud, look at why people argue about yellow paint and see how to check that a path reads. In the demo you’ll walk a maze yourself, with and without cues.
Why this matters
Getting lost in a game isn’t an adventure, it’s boredom. You walk in circles, try every door and can’t tell what the game wants from you. Designer Damion Schubert put it this way: having to open 30 doors to find the one you can go through is what breaks immersion. Immersion is the feeling of being inside the game. Sometimes a stuck player gives up on the game.
The Level Design Book, a free online handbook of level design, calls finding your way wayfinding. The player understands where they are and finds a route to where they want to go. The main route through a level, the one the designer intends, is the critical path.
The handbook warns against thinking you can lead the player by the hand. Players often leave the critical path on purpose, to look around and play at their own pace. The designer’s job is to give players what they need to make sense of the level themselves.