Working with Level Design

Players progress through video games one level at a time. Each level is designed to keep their attention, help them advance, and, most importantly, have a great time. We caught up with two of the level designers at Liquid Swords to learn more about how that process is happening for Game1. Join us for Part 1 of that interview, where we discuss how they work individually, together, and with the rest of the studio.

Rika Lim: I’m Rika Lim, and I work as a Level Designer who focuses on worldbuilding.

Graham Hill: And I’m Graham Hill, also a Level Designer. I mainly work on interiors for story missions.

Graham: If you look at the workflow, the narrative, core design goals, and high-level game direction come first.

Rika: Then Narrative continues with thematics of the districts in the city that we’re building. From there, we break everything down further into the main mission, where the player will go from step one, step two, step three, and so forth. From there, we connect the dots and split them into our own areas.

Graham: One side needs to ensure that when the player walks around the world, they understand its history and why it was built the way it was. They build a believable city that the player can explore – and wants to explore – on their own. That falls more on Rika’s world-building side.

The other side focuses on the story of the characters that live in the city. They work on the world’s linear narrative by adding key locations we guide the player to visit and experience through missions. That’s where my level design fits in.

Rika: Based on the existing list of buildings built by the artists, I planned a rough layout within the footprint given in each district, and then dive into building up the different parts based on the thematic and narrative we want to showcase.

Graham: I will identify the different spaces for the missions so we can integrate the work that the rest of the team has done and make sure it fits nicely with the things we already built. For example, if Rika builds out a particular area and adds a church, whatever goes on inside will be undefined. Then, I step in and define it.

Rika: We’re both dependent on the game’s narrative, but the world team can be a bit loose about it because, ultimately, we all want the players to experience the world for themselves instead of us throwing everything at them. But in your case, Graham, I guess you have to follow a more set path and ensure you’re aligned with the missions.

Graham: My work is quite heavily driven by Mission Design and Narrative but not dictated by them. They will hand me the core narrative beats that need to happen, but the way the player gets between those beats is open to my creativity and understanding of the game's mechanics. At this stage, I can give the Narrative Team feedback that could be, for example, the footprint isn’t large enough for this lengthy narrative exposition, so we need to find another solution. But from how I understand the world team, you drive the design for creating the different districts and areas.

Rika: Most of the layout is on me to plan out and ensure it's coherent. We start with 2D map planning and then check in with the Narrative Team and the Art Team on what the thematics are when it comes to the architectural style we’re going for in different city blocks. Then we ask, what is the story inside them? Because there is always a small background story for each city block we’re building. And how can we incorporate some of those as part of the environmental storytelling within that space itself? How do you travel from one end of a city block to another? What are the different transition types? We have to work together to answer these questions and make sure that opportunities actually present themselves in the stretch of buildings we’re planting into the world works, along with the key locations.

Graham: I guess where we overlap a little bit is when we make sure that the things we are building on both sides complement one another.

Rika: We both work with narrative designers, other designers, and tech, prop, exterior, and interior artists.

Graham: There’s some overlap between AI and combat, if only because we have to ensure we're building spaces that accommodate them. For example, you don’t want to make really narrow rooms where no one can throw a punch. That goes both ways. We’re getting to the point where we’ve identified specific game mechanics that we want from a level design perspective, like climbing a ladder. Without one, we would have to find alternatives, like giant winding staircases, that don’t necessarily fit with the rest of the world.

We have to be considerate of other departments. Art needs to design the ladder. Animation needs to ensure the character climbs it correctly and that animation flows blends naturally. Code needs to figure out how we get them actually to move up and down the ladder. Then, AI has to figure out what the AI does. Will it follow the player down the ladder, and in which case does the AI have to understand how a ladder works? There's always a push and pull between different department's needs and restrictions, so its important to find a compromise that works for everyone, and learning which battles you should fight and which hills you should die on.

Rika: It’s important to show the design intention first. Then we can figure out whether it’s something that we want to work towards, or should we take a step back and see if we can find a very different way forward? I think that a designer has to play quite a significant role in bridging the gap between teams and getting everyone on the same page, especially when working on a level. So it’s important to think about how you communicate; you may need to adjust when talking to art and adjust again when talking to code because they see the issue from their own perspectives.

Graham: As level designers, we’re ready to take the initial brunt of pushback because we’re the ones bringing everything together in the same space. What we create needs to align with everyone else’s vision and preferably exceed their expectations.

Rika: We must try to connect all relevant work from different departments and figure out how to make that happen.

Graham: For the story missions, we start by looking at our list of gameplay goals we want to achieve alongside the narrative beats. Let’s say one character meets up with another character because they need protection. The player will need to experience this discussion, ultimately resulting in a big escalation of violence. You have to escape by running through some tunnels. There are several gameplay goals to discuss here. We want to express different player archetypes, like exploration, social, and combat. We want the experience to be slightly less linear than the previous one worked on. We want to introduce a new mechanic. So, we have our key goals.

Narrative takes these goals and puts together a slightly more fleshed-out version of the outline we started with. When we’ve all agreed on it, I’ll take it to the footprint Rika’s put into the world. I’ll turn the area into a rough gray box just to get a sense of the space and how things work within it. We’ll review it as a team and walk through the narrative and gameplay. This brings up a lot of new ideas and questions, like if a character is able to walk into this space or do they need clearance. A purpose to be there? A key? We figure that out and then move on to answer the questions of how the character will get past any obstacles that are blocking them. Can they scale the building, use some social negotiation with a receptionist or guard, scare them off, or sneak by? Nothing is off the table. We throw all our ideas out and see which ones resonate.

The iteration begins once we’ve tackled these higher concepts in the gray box. Art takes a pass over the environment, and then we add some basic mechanics to make it playable. Now, we can feel out the pacing. You can fix that by extending the building or injecting some action or interactions. When we’re happy with the state, we pass it back to art, lighting, and audio, and then it starts to take shape for real.

Rika: Right now, the world team doesn’t go into that level of detail. We start with some references for different parts of the city and then jump into a particular block. We look to see where we can have a route, and then we create a rough plan around it. Maybe one of the areas looks richer than the other, and another could be more of an only on-foot experience instead of the player being able to drive through the area. The next step is to check in with art about whether this is out of the ordinary or if it works. If it does, I’ll start working on the details, like placing buildings. When I’m done with that and the layout and the navigation, we have a review where I talk through my intention and get feedback. After that’s addressed, I’ll hand it over to the art team, who will work their magic.

When the jobs, story, and threats in the world come together, we’ll take a second pass and figure out what we need to nudge and pull to make sure all the things fit. Like you said earlier, it’s about finding the balance of pulling and pushing.


Thank you, Rika and Graham, for walking us through your individual and collaborative work! We can’t wait to dive deeper into the craft of level design in Part 2. Until then, we’ll revisit our interviews with other swords, like our Material Artist Mickis or Håkan and Viktor in the UI/UX team!