Assignment 14
Level Design Document

Due: Saturday, April 25th at 11:59 pm

Historically the final (formal) document for this class is the game manual. However, with CoVID-19 disrupting so much of the course, we wanted to do something to reduce your workload. Manuals are fun, but they put a lot pressure on the artists in the final push of the semester.

In its place we are reintroducing the Level Design Document This is a document from years past, which was dropped to make room for the Visual Design Document. This document will help programmers, designers, and UI designers to hone what a level means, what patterns mean, and how to combine them for increased complexity.

This assignment will capture key learning objectives while minimizing work. For the purposes of this truncated semester, this document distills elements of tutorial design, level design, and storyboarding. In designing this document, you should first review the online lecture on Level Design.

Document Format

Before you start, remember to include the team name, game name, team number, and team members all at the top of this document. It should not be in memo format, but should be a more professional looking document like the Gameplay Specification.

After this, we want you to break the document into four parts (explained below):

• level design philisophy
• basic patterns
• composite patterns
• example levels

It is acceptable to make each one of these its own high level section. However, if the team thinks it has a better way of organizing the document, we will take that into consideration. Maybe your team will define the format for future semesters!

Level Design Philosophy

The team needs to rally behind how the game should feel and perform upon completion. What are you trying to accomplish with the various levels? In the end, does the team want the game to feel like an action game or more like a puzzle game? Should there be a feeling of tension or should the players be relaxed? Is exploration encouraged, or should optimal behavior be rewarded?

All teams have plenty of experience with design philosophies by now. This statement should focus on level design instead of just game mechanics. Keep it short at 2-3 paragraphs. The purpose of this initial section is to give us criteria that we can use to judge the rest of the document.

Basic Patterns

A basic pattern is what we call a "building block" in the lecture. It is a single mechanic/challenge pairing that represents a something that the player must overcome to solve the level. It is not the entire level, but only part of the level. Most levels are a sequence of basic patterns (and composite patterns). But either way, the key to level design is understanding the game’s building blocks.

For example, consider the following storyboard from the 2014 game Beck & Chuck. In this picture, the player has to make it past a missile launcher. The missile launcher is placed at a choke point, restricting the player's maneuverability. So the player must either destroy the launcher or time any actions very carefully.

The challenge with making a pattern (and with level design in general) is that you have no control over what a player will do Do not describe a patttern in terms of what a player will do (because they will not do it). You must describe how your pattern constrains the player and forces them to do something.

In this section of the document you should list several basic patterns for the game (at least three). For each pattern, provide a single storyboard illustrating the challenge and an an accompanying paragraph describing the pattern. Again, explain how the pattern constrains the player, not what the player will do.

We have some examples of basic patterns in the examples below. Think about level design in games that you have played and take inspiration from that, rather than looking at a document for a game you have never seen before. Many of your favorite genres have well-established patterns. Here are a few examples, to help your team think of design possibilities.

Platformers

High-Precision Jump: In a high-precision jump, the gap between two platforms is so large that you must make a running jump just as you reach the end of the first platform. If you jump too early, or stop running before you make the jump, you will not clear the distance. If you jump too late, you will fall off the first platform.

Moving Platforms: The moving platform is a variation on the high-precision jump. The platform you need to read is moving back-and-forth (or up-and-down). You need to time your jump so that the platform is close enough to your current platform in order to clear the distance.

Mobile Hazards: Monsters and platforms rarely chase you. The just go back-and-forth and block your way. Furthermore, Goomba-stomping aside, most monsters in platformers are to be avoided. The challenge is to time your jump to make it over the moving monster or hazard.

Stealth Games

Cover: In a stealth game, guards typically cannot see you while you are behind walls, crates or other obstructions. You therefore need to move quickly from cover to cover, so that you are never seen by the guards.

Patrol Patterns: A patrol pattern loop that the guards make about the level (or part of the level). To move about the level, you learn this pattern, and take advantage of it to keep your player actively out of the line of sight of the guards.

Campers: A camper is a guard that never moves, and is blocking a location that you need to reach. You must either disable or distract this guard using an appropriate game mechanic.

Cover Shooters

Cover: As the name implies, cover shooters also use cover as a design pattern. While enemies can see you behind cover, they cannot hit you with weapons. Of course, you cannot hit them while in cover either. The challenge in these game is to come out of cover at just the right time to hit another enemy.

Covering Fire: As we said above, you have to come out of cover to hit an enemy. Covering fire is a constant stream of fire from the enemy that forces you to remain in cover. If you are out of cover for too long, you will be hit and die.

Cover Busters: A cover buster is an enemy whose whole purpose is to get you out of cover. A classic technique is to throw a grenade at your current location. The grenade can circumvent cover, and you are given limited time to move away from cover before the grenade explodes.

Composite Patterns

A level is often a sequence of patterns. However, the most interesting levels are those in which the player has to overcome challenges in parallel instead of just in sequence. This is the definition of a composite pattern: two or more basic patterns combined together so that the player must overcome them simultaneously.

A good composite pattern should be more than the sum of its parts. Just as we like to see emergent gameplay when we combine player mechanics, we would like for their to be an emergent challenge that can only occur when the challenges are combined together.

In this section, teams should come up with at least one composite pattern. Once again storyboard the challenge. In addition, include a paragraph or more describing the pattern. This paragraph should clearly indicate the basic patterns that make up the composite pattern. In addition, explain the emergent challenge, bringing attention to what is new about this challenge, created by combining the basic patterns together.

This might seem a little abstract, and it is hard to fully describe without seeing it in a document with the appropriate basic patterns. See the first few examples below, most notably Aphelion and Squeak & Swipe. However, what we want is very straightforward if you think about how this works in other games.

Platformers

Forced Jump: In a forced jump, the player must overcome one of the jump challenges. This can be either a moving platform or a high-precision jump. However, the current platform also has a mobile hazard on it. The mobile hazard forces you to jump to avoid it. The emergent challenge is that this forced jump causes you to lose the momentum that you need to jump to the next platform. Therefore, the jump to avoid must be to the next platform, or you will never make it.

Phased Hazards: Many times there are more than mobile hazard at the same time. These are simple if they are all moving at the same speed; you just need to time your jump over each one. In a phased hazard, one of the mobile hazards is moving at a faster speed than the other. The emergent challenge here is that timing your jump for each hazard becomes much harder; there are two different time intervals that you must keep track of and this can break your rhythm.

Stealth Games

Buddy System: Stealth games typically have more than one guard in a level. The AI for these guards may even expect to see one another, and get suspicious when they don't. They definitely get suspicious when they see the body of another guard. The emergent challenge here is that this can make disabling or distracting a camper that much harder. It has to be done out of sight of any guard whose patrol pattern takes it past a camper.

Cover Peeking: While a guard cannot see through cover, it might look behind cover, or even destroy cover that it passes by as part of its patrol pattern. The emergent challenge here is that this puts a time limit on how long you can stay in cover. You have to get out of poor cover before a peeking guard patrols by.

Cover Shooters

Arenas: Cover shooters often have an arena layout as part of their level design. There is more than one cover location, and they are not all facing the same direction. The emergent challenge is that this cover allows the enemy to safely get around to your side and flank you behind cover. Like cover busters, this is a design pattern to keep the player from "turtling.”

Covering the Busters: Covering fire makes it hazardous to move away from cover. Cover busters through grenades (or other weapons) that make staying behind cover dangerous. Putting the two together is obvious. The emergent challenge is to stay behind cover enough to be safe, without staying too long that the enemy forces you out before you are ready.

Example Levels

Now that you have the basic patterns, create some levels. We want three levels: an easy level, an intermediate level, and a hard level. You do not have to have all of your design patterns in each level. The design patterns also do not have to be tuned to exactly the same difficulty in each level. For example, in a platformer, the hard level is often the result of taking a standard high precision jump and making it more precise.

In creating each level, the team should should storyboard it clearly. In addition, annotate which design patterns are in the level and where they are located. As an example of what we are looking for, consider this annotated level from the 2014 game Dash.

If you have described your design patterns well enough, we should be able to understand the entire level just by looking at this storyboard.

We do want some text accompanying the storyboard for each level. In this text we want you to argue why you believe this level is easy, intermediate, or hard. But we do not need much description of the level beyond that.

Examples

This is a very old document. We stopped requiring it in the introductory course in 2014, and stopped requiring it in the advanced course in 2018. It is a value document, it is just that the others were more valuable. But the end result is that all of our most recent and best examples come from the advanced class. But this okay because there is nothing really mobile-specific about this document.

Squeak & Swipe

Winner of Most Innovative (Mobile) Game in the Spring 2016 Showcase, Squeak & Swipe does a good job at identify a large number of basic patterns. They also clearly identify the patterns in each of their levels.

Aphelion

Another popular game from the Spring 2016 Showcase, Aphelion was a puzzle game that consisted of a large number of challenging levels. This document is longer than some of the others, so be sure to look at others besides this one for guidance. Despite its length, it still maintains clarity without overload. In particular, they do an excellent job of identifying complex patterns and incorporating them into their game.

Canon

Since 2017 was a one of the great years for mobile games, it was easy to overlook the minimalist game Canon. However, they did really well at Showcase and were accepted to Boston Festival of Indie Games because of strong level design. This document shows exactly how to come up with patterns and assemble them together to make a level.

Arcane Tectonics

Winner of Most Innovative (Mobile) Game in the Spring 2018 Showcase, Arcane Techntonics crafted a very strong Level Design Philosophy, which allowed them to pull apart their levels to their most discrete pieces. The progression of level difficulty is particularly well-represented in their write-up.

Coalide

The mobile audience favorite at Spring 2018 Showcase, Coalide has a level design document that is an exercise in clarity and brevity. Notice how the logic builds with each step, and the thinking behind each level decision is explained.

Underhand

The viral Reddit sensation Underhand is another 2017 game. We put its document a little later than the others because it is a very non-standard level design document. As this game is a strategy card game, it does not have the traditional notion of levels. However, they can adjust the difficulty and were able to identify the proper ways to do that.

Submission

Due: Saturday, April 25th at 11:59 pm

You should submit a PDF file called leveldesign.pdf containing all of the information above. We ask that the file be a PDF so that we can annotate it in order to return it to you with feedback for possible revision. It is fine if you create the document in a program like Microsoft Word, but you should convert it to PDF before submission.

As the prospect of revision implies, this is not the final draft of your specification. You will have later opportunities to revise your concept. However, as with previous revisable documents, you should take this assignment seriously.