Practical Game Design

What is level design?

Level design is the process of creating playable content that serves as a medium of delivering gameplay and storytelling experiences to players. Some games rely on carefully crafted and strictly planned levels/maps/stages/missions. Others leave room for randomization, but still require human input to create puzzles, challenges, enemy spawn rules, pre-assembled level chunks, and even high-level world-building rules.

The craft of level design lives on a flexible cross-section between game design, storytelling, and art. Depending on the needs of the project and team structure, a level designer will either take care of the entire level design from start to finish or ask for artistic input from environmental artists, who'll ...