Trying a new level design format

There was a cool user generated content game that just recently released called Super Dungeon Maker. It allows players to make cool labyrinthine dungeons a la classic top down Zelda games. The toolset is pretty intuitive to use so it was easy to dive in and start making things.

I understand that the first thing you make in any format isn’t going to be great. You just need to push through and get used to that format and learn your lesson quickly. Luckily I have a design blog which is perfect for doing that!

  • So I wanted to make something small but still practice teaching players through scaling up challenge.

  • I wanted something that folded back on in itself where the player would return to a hub area and find their bearings.

  • And lastly I think it was important to focus in on just a couple of features. So I chose the bomb and feather and focuses a series of levels on each of them

From these design values I set to work on drawing out some sort of a floor plan on graph paper. As seen below they are super simple blockouts of the space to help frame any ideas through that structural prism.

The interesting problem I had with my approach here in sketching out the shape of the dungeon is that I had an overall structural idea of how the level should flow, but there was no connective tissue. There weren’t any individual ideas that a level could nicely hang on and progress from. Having that structural form in place is great, but if it doesn’t have the interesting content inside of it that both informs and is informed by the structure then you just have an empty box.

Something really important for me to take from this is that both structure and content need to be thought of simultaneously instead of fitting the content to whatever structural box has been constructed. That’s definitely the problem with that hub room in the centre of the first floor. It doesn’t have an interesting idea, it just presents enemies for players to randomly attack and be gated by.

Another point to bring up is the environmental dressing around a room. Again, I’ll get the structure of the room and its main gameplay concepts sorted first with the environmental art that can be placed coming last in the process. Anything I do in this regard feels random and unfocused in regards to the rest of the level. It feels like I’m just trying to get it out of the way so I can move on to the next level, but it’s not an option to leave it bare so it feels like it still needs to be done.

I’m still trying to find the right balance in how much to put down, what space to give the player and how each piece of art placed down affects the space from a perceptual level. I haven’t any broad conclusions to take from it but I do know that it’s something I need to get used to and understand more.

The linear structure of the level was good for a first dungeon to keep everything constrained but it was a little boring to go through and not what someone might expect from this kind of game. The spin I put on this linearity was that it always came back to a hub room that would help orient the player for going forward.

It doesn’t help that this hub room is uninteresting and has nothing new for the player to do each time they encounter it. So there’s definitely lessons from that to take forward. What I’ll attempt for the structure of the next dungeon is a smaller experience but one that affords the player the option to tackle things in a different order. Having this folding back structure will help with this but it will be a cool challenge for the next level.

I’ve learned lots from just doing this one level. I’ve distilled some of the most important parts in a quick blog post here because I don’t want to be spending all of my weekend writing! But lots to take forward for the next one, which is going to be important. It’s all well and good to experiment with a new format but unless you hone that technique over and over again you won’t get better. Practice and internalising these design lessons I learn is important to get better!

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A quick test on the edge of the grid

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Trying to give starting clues