Casual Game Design:Designing Play For The Gamer In All Of Us

Designing the Levels 

pages 41-50

Will most likely have to make level design's with minimal tools while waiting for the game to be fleshed out. Often they will have to be thrown away as new features get introduced. doing this can help you understand tthe potential and limitations of the game system.

Balancing learning curves to certain target audience can be hard and you may have to cater for many different types of players.

General guidelines for designing levels:

• Be Empathetic 

level design should not be a struggle between designer and player. No, the game designer should offer a helping hand to guide the players through the level, leading them toward enjoyment.

 

You need be able to put yourself in the position of the players and see the game through their eyes. They don’t know all of the tricks and secrets hidden in the level.  

 

What would the players like to do?

They want to win. Your challenge is letting players do that without  letting them see that you 

let them win. 

 

• If You Can’t Beat Your level, Then It’s Waaaaaaaay Too Hard 

As a general rule of thumb for casual games, I feel a designer should be able to beat early 

levels in a game with one arm tied behind his or her back.

You have to be able to play through your level from beginning to end and prove it’s winnable.

 

Don’t tune the level for your own enjoyment. Tune it for the player’s enjoyment.  

 

• Design For The General Audience, Not The Hardcore  

Design your levels to please and thrill the general audience with intermediate skill levels. This is the audience that will make your game a success. You want them to be happy.

The hardcore players always have the loudest voices: they are a minority. 

 

• Ease Players Into The Game 

Ease players into the game. Introduce one element at a time. If your game has a lot of 

power-ups, dole them out one at a time.

 

Enable players to master the different components. 

 

Since players must spend so much energy learning the game in the first few levels, don’t 

overwhelm them by making them learn tricky levels too. 

 

• Don’t Forget To Challenge Players 

Without a bit of challenge, the game will lose all sense of vitality, devolving to no more than an exercise with some very idiosyncratic constraints

Dynamic difficulty adjustments

• Build Levels Around A Central Concept 

A level is like a great pop song. It has a central melody that you can build variations around but underlying the whole level is one catchy hook or idea

Focusing on one idea will help you find the core element of fun in the level and let you polish that to a shine

• Teach Players To Play The Level 

If your level is all about a particular type of move, give your players space to try out the move and learn to master it before placing them squarely into danger. Otherwise they will repeatedly die and get frustrated.
  
Setup general patterns and rules that players can learn to“read.”If your game requires a particular type of wall jump, set up similar structures for the wall jumps in the easy and hard parts. 

• Give Players Room To Explore 

Completing the level should require the player to interact with the new feature in some basic and straightforward way.

Forcing them to use it will help push them to use the feature and break them out of their established playing pattern
  
In the next level, use the feature again, but open the play up to let the players explore other aspects of the feature. If it’s a power-up, give them the chance to explore the different facets and ways they could use the power-up.

• Occasionally Break Your Own Rules (Carefully) 

Once you have set up patterns in your game, you can break your own rules. Do this with care. 

 

You don’t want to call into doubt the entire system of meaning you have created for players

 

• Create A Plan 

Lay out where you think you will introduce different concepts, power-ups, enemies and content to the game. Make sure this level plan fits with the over-all narrative and goals of the game.

• Vary Your Levels 

Where possible, get multiple designers to contribute levels to the game. Different designers inject fresh perspectives into the game, with each designer finding new ways to use the level variable tools to create a slightly different experience.

One lead designer should set some basic parameters and target goals for the all levels that the individual level designers follow.
 

• Refine, Play and Refine 

This is the most important part of level design. Sometimes this will require you take a break from the level for a day or so then come back to it and try it again. A little distance can you give you some much needed perspective on your work.

• Playtest 

Get outsiders to look at it and carefully note how they play it, where they have fun and where they don’t. Then modify the level to draw out the fun parts and reduce the not-so-fun parts.

More Notes :

Practice is the most important part. If you want to be a game designer, you have to start making games however you can. 

The more obvious and intuitive your rules, the better casual games they will make. Plus, some of these activities may even make good video games.