World and levels › The idea
A world you believe in: where people live and where the roads go
Know first: How a world is built: from large to small
A village stands near water, but not right at the river. A road turns toward a ford, fields lie next to the houses, and forest covers the slope. Everything on a map has a reason, and a player who knows no geography still feels it when the reason is missing. This lesson looks at where people settled and why, how the land arranges itself around a village, where roads lead, and how the stories of a place grow out of these reasons. In the demo you pick the spot for a village yourself.
Why this matters
Picture a map put together by eye. A village stands on a bare summit with no water around. A road climbs over a mountain when a valley lies right beside it. A field sits lost in a deep forest, far from any house. All the villages look the same and stand at random. The player can’t say what is wrong, but the world looks like a stage set: arranged, not lived in.
The Level Design Book is an open reference on level design. It takes a practical view of worldbuilding, the invention of a game’s world: the story of the world should solve the game’s problems. Its example: a monster stays out of water not because the program can’t make it walk through water, but because it “fears water.” World logic works the same way. It tells you where to put a village, where to run a road and why a river can’t be crossed anywhere you like. And the player believes the answers.
The same reference warns against inventing more than you need up front. Ten pages about the history of a house are wasted if the level with that house is cut. You need reasons on the map, not a chronicle: where the water is, where the ground is dry, where routes meet. It advises starting with the map, with terrain and climate first and people second: “where do they live and why?”