Level Design Principles
Game: Genies & Gems, Paint Monsters, Where's My? Franchise, Lost Light
Role: Lead Game Designer, Game Designer, Level Designer
Created hundreds of levels for multiple puzzle games, each with their own distinct player base.
What to do? vs How to do it?
I like the break level design into two general buckets:
What to do? - This is the 'puzzle' of the level. The player has to try and figure out what they need to do in order to solve the puzzle.
How to do it? - This is the action of actually completing the level, or the 'execution' of the level. After figuring out 'What to do', the player needs to actually do it.
I find that almost all level design, regardless of genre, can be be broken down into these two buckets. However, the balance between the two differs depending on the audience you are trying to cater to and the purpose of the game/feature/system you are designing.
Where's My Water? 2
Where's My Water? 2 level example
The Where's My? series was a physics-based puzzle game where players dug through dirt to guide liquids through levels, with different mechanics influencing the liquid's behavior. The core focus was on the puzzle-solving "ah-ha!" moment, but there was also an execution challenge in drawing precise paths.
I was responsible for designing, balancing, and tuning levels for multiple Where's My? games, including Where's My Water? 2 - the first free to play entry of the franchise.
In this level I designed, I balanced puzzle-solving with mastery of dexterity. While completing the puzzle was simple once figured out, collecting all the Ducks required increasingly precise actions. This design preserved the puzzle as the main focus while offering an optional skill challenge for players aiming for 100% completion.
Complexity vs Difficulty
One major distinction I make when creating content is between complexity and difficulty. Complexity revolves around the process of thinking through the level or the actions the player needs to take in the level. While the difficulty revolves around the likelihood of the player succeeding at completing the level. Though the two can be correlated, a simple design can still be difficult, and a complex design can be easy.
As lead designer on Genies & Gems, I guided my team through a large scale retune of several hundred levels that were identified as having high churn and low VC spend. My team and I simplified complex designs, prioritized quicker play, and increased the amount of possible matches, embracing a more straightforward design approach that encouraged players to “break everything.”
The result was:
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50% reduced churn in retuned levels
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60% increase of VC spend per round in retuned levels
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Overall increase of 1% D1 and D7 retention
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Overall increase of 4% rounds played per day
Simple to understand goal - simply break everything
A more complex design requiring much more thought both initially and for each move
Randomness
Randomness plays a crucial role in shaping player experience, varying greatly based on what the game is trying to achieve. In a physics-based game like Where's My Water?, randomness is minimized to enhance predictability, allowing players to experiment while expecting consistent outcomes. This predictability helps players learn the game's intricacies, making the discovery of specific solutions to puzzles the key to enjoyment.
Conversely, in Match-3 and similar puzzle games, randomness is integral to both the challenge and fun. While a fortunate drop can influence outcomes, when designing levels, I alway ensured skill was just as, if not more important. Even within the randomness, I carefully control elements to maintain a consistent experience, balancing luck and strategy to engage players effectively.
Two plays of the same level - note that the colors fall differently both times, but they fall at a similar ratio - this allows one play to get closer to finishing than the other though they play more or less the same.
The first 5 levels of Lost Light reinforced the opening tutorial, slowly removing the hand holding and ensuring players understood the core gameplay
Telling vs Doing
I believe players learn best when they can discover mechanics on their own, as it helps them internalize the experience more effectively than being told outright. However, when systems or interactions aren't immediately obvious, or when players lack the patience to experiment, guiding them through actions while still allowing them to engage is a better approach than simply providing instructions.
In Where's My Water?, players had infinite tries, and trial and error was key to learning new mechanics, with level design serving as the primary teacher after an initial basic instruction. On the other hand, Lost Light featured unique, time-pressured gameplay that wasn't intuitive. To address this, I designed a comprehensive tutorial to guide players through the core gameplay and introduced tutorials for each new obstacle and game mode.