Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design

Chapter 10. Integrating Level Design and Mechanics

In this chapter and the next, we shift our focus from purely emergent game mechanics to mechanics as a tool for progression design. We look at the ways that game levels organize their challenges into missions and how they interweave a story with the player’s progress. Although people often think of level design as creating spaces or using software level design tools, game mechanics play an equally important role in defining how a level provides challenges to the player.

In this chapter, we investigate how to integrate level design with the design of game mechanics. We look at different kinds of progress that take place in games and address how levels structure play. We also discuss ways that ...