What is Level Design?

We’re back for more insights into level design with Rika, who works with the world, and Graham, who focuses on interiors. In Part 1, they told us how they work alone and with the rest of the studio. Now, we’re ready to take a more granular look at level design for open-world games, what the process entails, and their best advice for aspiring game developers.

Rika: There are tools that will create rows of assets, like buildings, with just a few clicks. Generating a stretch of buildings saves a lot of time but also limits your work. I like being able to create interesting elevations and shapes within the world itself, like nice slopes and views of a larger area. I can do that if I place the buildings manually.

For Game1, we place buildings manually, one by one. So, I have to figure out how that works with the layout. I’ll look at references and focus on the logic and structure of how and where buildings are placed in real life so I can stay grounded and bring that into our world while I create something brand new.

Graham: The intention comes across much clearer that way. You’ve placed that building in that particular spot because you wanted to. It’s a real benefit to be this meticulous if you want to create a world with a believable history or a lot of character.

Rika: We’re making an open-world game, so we’ll go in with the mindset of also working with modular kits. I think we need them in terms of sustainability and the ability to maintain a long development cycle.

Graham: It's that fine line between what is achievable from a creative perspective and then what is achievable from a production perspective. While my creative mindset would want us to place every plant meticulously, you have a set amount of time to make a game, and ultimately, what the player experiences is the end goal. And if the player doesn't notice that tools have been used to assist the creation of this huge city, or at least if they do notice it's very minimal, my own creativity needs to take a backseat.

Rika: It’s a balance. Key locations are one of a kind. I think having a few unit pieces that join the normal modular pieces and do something different is okay. If you’re building the same thing over and over again with one small variation, the modular kit will be the most helpful. It’s like a puzzle, and you need to work out how all the different pieces fit together.

There’s a great Game Maker’s Toolkit video that describes how the open world in Elden Ring was built. I find it interesting because it’s open, but it’s not really that open. Certain areas lead you to certain parts of a different space, and it’s up to you whether you want to explore it. You can always come back to it later. The way they planned the navigation through the different areas on the map is really well done. There are a lot of great landmarks and vistas that help anchor the world.

Graham: Scale. It’s easy to make things too big. Seeing something in-game versus seeing it in an editor viewport are two different things. I can be building a level and think to myself, “This is great!” all while having completely misjudged how tall a meter actually is. I’ll have built something eight meters tall, but that shouldn’t be that tall. At all. In any world.

To avoid this, one of the first things I try to do when I’m building a new environment is to get one room to scale and then take it from there. The last thing you want to do is build a huge thing and then put a camera in there. One way to test the scale is to put a character reference in the room and then stack them. Then you can look at it and see that the room is 4 people standing on top of each other tall, which is probably too big when I imagine four Grahams standing on top of each other.

Rika: Jumping into the 3D space too quickly is another one. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see how your 2D things work in the 3D space, but avoid doing it before you have an actual understanding or an idea of what the intention is. Figure that out before you start building the level and everything that goes with it. If you’re testing out an idea, that’s one thing. But chances are, if you start making a level without an idea or an intention, chances are that it won’t work out very well.

Graham: I’ve done that. You’re just so excited to dive in, and you have an intent as the general flow in your mind. I found that understanding and researching the processes in a building helps you avoid that, at least when it comes to interiors. If you're building a brewery, you might not have to spend six hours learning how beer is made. But at least take the time to go beyond references and do enough research to grasp the intent of each room. What is their purpose? How big do they need to be, and why? Then, you can figure out the intent of both gameplay and narrative.

Rika: The same goes for building city blocks. There’s a community in every block – who are they? What is their daily life like? How do you incorporate those activities? It could be with a backyard where they hang out or a balcony that gives them access to a rooftop. We blend all of the different spaces with purpose. No room is ever just a room.

Graham: Don’t be afraid that something isn’t going to work. When you’re creating something digital, remember that you can delete things that aren’t working. Don’t be afraid to test different things. If a particular room isn’t working for me, I grab a bunch of it, rotate it, and move it up and down just to give myself a different perspective. It doesn’t matter if it breaks. I can hit CTRL + Z and not save. We’ll work that way with other teams as well. When I finish with a gray box, Piotr on the Art Team will take it and mess around with it. He doesn't have to change anything. He doesn't have to submit anything. I'll come over and look at what he's done, and we take it from there.

That’s why it’s also so important not to forget the importance of collaboration. We're not working in isolation. We are working with other people. While it's important for us to lay down the foundations, others can come in and make changes. Usually, those changes are for the better.

Rika: Having a different set of eyes to look at things is a big part of the iteration process. They’ll see things I don’t that will make the space better than before. You just need to provide them with communication and a clean space.

Graham: You can’t be afraid to ask and accept that help from other people. I think there's a fear that because you are the level designer, you have to be the one that produces the gray box, and the gray box has to be perfect because it is your job. But at the end of the day, art will go in, and they will make some changes. Code is going to request some changes; probably the space needs to be bigger. Having that collaborative mindset will take a bit of that pressure off.

Rika: Many people assume that we’re level artists. Level art is not just one thing; it overlaps between programming and art. You need to understand the different aspects of your level to work on it. Without understanding the space and intention, you’ll end up with gray boxes and nothing else because you don’t know if one is actually a chair and the entire space is actually a living room.

Graham: Design touches many different areas, which could dilute people’s expectations of the role. It’s a little bit of everything, from gray boxing an environment to the basic scripting of an environment to a little bit of art in the environment. It's contextualizing all the other fields. Here’s a ladder to contextualize exploration gameplay. Here is an NPC to facilitate the dialog. You, as a level designer, don’t need to worry about what that dialog actually is; that’s what the Narrative Team needs to figure out. Or the gameplay associated with it, which is up to the Systems Design and Gameplay Design Teams. But you facilitate all of that.

Rika: I’ve been mentoring level designers for a few years, and one of the questions I get a lot is if they have to know how to program really well or create art really well. I tell them that it’s nice to know a bit of both, but you don’t have to be an expert. Some studios will want you to do some feature visual scripting or show your intention by spawning enemies or characters in a space you can navigate around in. The important thing is that you understand environmental storytelling through visual indicators of places within the world.

Graham: People, particularly students, will get hung up on the tools they think they need to learn. This is understandable! They feel pressure to learn Unreal because most of the industry works with that engine. But at the end of the day, design theory, composition, and understanding how to design are more important than learning the tools. You can learn how to work with them later; that’s the easy part.

Rika: As long as you’re willing and open to learning the tech side of things, you’ll figure out the tools and the engine. Focus on building a solid, fundamental understanding of level design and what goes into it. You might need to teach yourself or learn by doing, but get that foundation.

Graham: Practice is a huge thing, and my main piece of advice to aspiring level designers is to do it in Source or any engine they feel comfortable with, as long as it supports games that are still being played today, like multi-player games with a thriving modding community. This means that you can make levels that people can actually play. And they will. This means that they can give feedback, which helps you learn. When we talk about designing with intent, you can actually see if that intent is realized in the gameplay.

You can really improve as a designer by seeing the things that aren’t quite working as you were expecting. Figure out how and what needs to change for it to work. You’ll be able to see your results visibly. If people only build big levels in Unreal without any gameplay, it’s all theoretical. Assumptions will only get you so far.

Graham: Make levels. I think it’s good to look at what other people have done and try to understand why. But at the end of the day, you get better at level design by making levels. Make the ones you personally want to play.

Rika: I often get asked if you want to work at a specific studio, should you make levels inspired by their games for your portfolio? I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s good to know how they make their games, and you can draw inspiration from different aspects of them and create your own interpretation of them. You’ll be coming in with a fresh pair of eyes, which is valuable for them and good practice for you. My advice is to draw inspiration from the specific game and adapt specific features/mechanics from it that you feel work really well. Alongside them, you can then combine some ideas you may have to create your own take on this similar experience which can provide people with a fresh perspective.

Graham: Describe your process. I love reading dev blogs and portfolios that describe how they focus on each section or include a video where they talk over a fly-through. An image on its own won’t tell me that much, so to all the young buzzing developers out there who want to get into level design, document everything. I do it here. I screenshot and video pretty much every gray box version of a level we do.

Rika: Mark your images to show your intention as a level designer so that they are not just beautiful screenshots. This is a great way to showcase the design work that you are doing in each of them. Make sure to explain the process and challenges you go through instead of just supplying a bunch of beautiful screenshots. That’s what we really care about.


Thank you, Rika and Graham, for putting level design under a microscope for us! If you missed it, check out Part 1 of our interview with Rika and Graham, where they discuss working on their own and with the wider Liquid Swords team! You can find more interviews with our teams on our website, like the one with one of our Technical Artists or Audio team!