When you think about video game design, you can think of it in terms of a jigsaw puzzle. Not only does each piece need to be placed in the correct location, but they all eventually have to fit together. The end result is, of course, some kind of image that is now only visible because all the pieces of the puzzle are there.

While some people think the gameplay puzzle piece, or the story puzzle piece, is the most important, most would argue that the last puzzle piece you can’t do without is the level design piece. Good level design is in many ways the heart of a game; without it, everything else doesn’t work.

This holds true whether you’re talking about a high-profile action adventure game like Uncharted or a simple 2D platformer like the original Super Mario Bros. While good visuals are great, and breathtakingly detailed environments are cool too, all that will matter to players is how fun the levels are.

The following are a few tips you’ll find useful if you want to captivate players with not just your visuals, gameplay, and story, but level design as well…

Give Players Something New To Look At Once In Awhile

One way to guarantee that players get bored of your game’s levels is to make them look at the same things over and over. We know creating new objects, enemies, and other content takes time, so we’re not asking you to make every single thing in your game unique. However, players catch on when they kill the exact same enemy a thousand times, or see identical trees spread out throughout your game.

The fact is, gamers these days expect to see more variety simply because technology has advanced. However, offering players different scenery has always been important. Nintendo only had bits and pixels to work with, but that didn’t mean they made every world in Super Mario Bros. 3 the same; you have desert, water, clouds, ice, etc.

When it comes to story-driven games, changing the scenery is necessary to make players feel like they’re actually progressing or getting closer to a goal. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves did this well by having you go from the rain forests of Borneo to the war-torn streets of a Nepal city, eventually ending up in the snow-covered Himalayas.

Give Players Direction Without Holding Their Hand

One of the difficulties of designing levels is finding a balance between making sure players can figure out what to do (or where to go) next without forcing them. In other words, just as many players are likely to get frustrated over getting lost, as there are players who will get bored if the next step is always laid out for them.

Good level design means the player went down a certain path, or toward a direction, not because it was the correct way to go, but because something caught their interest. A good example of this is Banjo-Kazooie, a game that nearly twenty years later still boasts some of the funnest worlds of any 3D platformer.

No matter where you go in any of the nine words in Banjo-Kazooie, there is always something intriguing that urges you to explore. From a giant crocodile head in Bubblegloop Swamp and a haunted hedge maze in Mad Monster Mansion, to a dog-shaped Sphynx in Gobi’s Valley, you always want to investigate what each area has in store for you.

Reward Players Whenever They Deserve It

When your average player discovers a hidden path that’s easy to miss, or a tall object that took time and skill to get onto, they expect some kind of reward. It can be more health, ammo, an extra life…anything as long as the spot isn’t empty.

That is why a lot of games feature some kind of collectible that isn’t necessary to complete the game but still makes players feel accomplished for collecting them. Some examples are the Green Stars in Super Mario 3D World, feathers in Assassin’s Creed 2, and all the extra spaceship parts in Pikmin.

You can even go the extra mile and offer special rewards like a secret room, optional boss, or something that adds to the story. The Bioshock games, for example, have audio diaries hidden throughout each area that aren’t needed to complete the game, but offer narrative details that you otherwise would never learn about

Don’t Throw Your Levels Together

One of the easiest things to do when it comes to level design is just start placing random content in hopes that it turns out. You start grabbing whatever looks neat from the built-in library of the game engine you’re using, and start dropping rooms, corridors, enemies, and more.

Like anything else that just gets tossed together without any planning, your levels are going to be less than stellar if you do it this way. Since the purpose of levels are to move the game forward and keep players interested, you should always create them with the utmost care and thought.

You can tell a level was carefully designed when it offers different paths for players to reach the same goal and gives players various options to choose from. Even the very first world of Super Mario Bros. has moments where you can either continue forward or go down a pipe; hop across a gap or take the high ground by jumping on blocks.

[su_note]Click here to learn more about: The School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy.[/su_note]

One of the hardest things for a developer to balance out in their own game is difficulty. This is because developers are almost generally pretty good at actually playing games. This comes as no surprise, considering that if you actually want to make games for a living, then you probably spend a good amount of time playing them already. This also means that you’re going to eventually be very efficient at playing your own game, since you’ve been working on it and testing it for months, if not years.

Thus, it is very important to have beta testers check out your game. Since they are new to the game, and didn’t spend hours upon hours developing it, they’ll be the key to discovering if it has a balanced difficulty curve or if it needs some adjustment.

More importantly, you as a designer, should strive to find fun ways of making sure players are being tested at the level that they want to be.

However, a lot of times developers tend to forget that there are, in fact, a lot of gamers out there looking for a challenge. Instead of applying simple changes like making a boss stronger, or giving the player less health, here are various ways of making sure talented gamers find your game fun, while avoiding frustrating your casual audience…

Add Optional Collectibles

Collectibles that players don’t have to pick up to complete the stage or game are very common in games, and for good reason: they work. Whether you’re talking about finding treasures in the Uncharted series, going for the green stars in Super Mario 3D World, or grabbing all the golden KONG letters in Donkey Kong Country, a lot of big games have optional collectibles because they not only offer a new challenge, but add replay value as well.

More importantly, no one is forced to collect them. This is vital because these collectibles tend to require more skill on the part of the player to find.  Of course, you should also consider providing a cool prize to players who do take the time to collect whatever you scatter across your game’s levels and world.

Present A Harder Way To Play

If you’ve ever played the original Bioshock, you know all about “Little Sisters”. They are always accompanied by large “Big Daddies” that serve as some of the toughest enemies in the game. Once you defeat these brutes, the Little Sisters’ fate rests in your hands: be harvested or be set free. The former gives the player more ADAM than the other choice, and having more ADAM makes the game easier since, you’ll be able to utilize more Plasmids in combat.

Bioshock puts this choice completely in the hands of the player every time they come across one of the 21 Little Sisters. While harvesting them makes your life easier, saving them makes you feel like a better person, and earns you a much more satisfying ending. At the same time, having less ADAM means the game will be slightly more difficult. In other words, players can choose to do things the hard way and get rewarded for it.

Include Optional Bosses

Another way of allowing players to really see if they have mastered your game is with the optional bosses. These powerful enemies are usually much stronger than the ones players will face in the main story, but do not have to be defeated to complete the game. A few memorable optional bosses that come to mind are Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts, Culex in Super Mario RPG, Pokemon Trainer Red in Pokemon Gold/Silver, and Ruby/Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII.

Super-hard optional bosses are great because they’re not meant to be for everyone, and players know it. Those with lower skill levels will have no problem avoiding these strong enemies, while those who want a greater challenge will certainly see if they’ve got what it takes to bring them down.

As always, it doesn’t hurt to reward players with something cool for their efforts.

[su_note]Learn more about the School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy by clicking here.[/su_note]

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As a game developer, it never hurts to look at what titles are selling like hotcakes, especially on a platform you’re considering releasing your own project on. Over the years Steam has grown exponentially for, among other reasons, being one of the most developer friendly platforms out there. Between the “Steam Greenlight” and “Early Access” programs, it’s no surprise why many devs – both indie and big-budget – strive to release their games on Valve’s digital marketplace.

It may come as a surprise, then, that despite Steam boasting 125 active users and 10 million concurrent users, only a dozen games have broken the 500,000 sales mark. In fact, only 6 of those 12 have reached a million units sold. These stats are according to Sergey Galyonkin, founder of Steam stat tracker on Steam Spy. Here’s the list of games:

More Than 1 Million Sold

• Grand Theft Auto V
• ARK Survival Evolved
• H1Z1
• Cities: Skylines
• Rocket League
• Besiege

More Than 500,000 Sold

• Dying Light
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Stranded Deep
• Killing Floor 2
• Total War: Attila
• Pillars of Eternity

Below are a few things we noticed about this list that may just be interesting, or may actually prove useful when deciding which kind of project you’d like to release on Steam someday…

Some Of Those Games Are Still In Early Access

Despite still being considered “incomplete,” Besiege, H1Z1, ARK Survival Evolved, Stranded Deep, and Killing Floor 2 have managed to sell a lot of copies. For those unfamiliar, Early Access allows developers to get vital information by releasing a beta version of their game. Thus, players know they are not playing the final version of the title, and should expect changes (mostly for the better).

The benefits of going with an Early Access release are not without their risks. However, we’re still seeing many players interested in paying money to play games that are still in development. Clearly, gamers are intrigued by the idea of playing a game and, with their help, watching as developers work out kinks, fix bugs, and add content the players themselves suggested.

Pretty Much Any Genre Can Make It Big On Steam

While we doubt an educational or erotic game will ever join the list above, it’s cool to see some variety in terms of genre when looking at the best selling Steam games. Instead of being only first person shooters and action adventure games, we have survival sandbox, city building, computer RPG, strategy, and even a physics based vehicle soccer game.

It’s also worth noting that a good mix of single player and multiplayer games found success on Steam. While the list is dominated by MMOs and games with multiplayer options, fans of one player games have clearly been enjoying The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cities: Skylines, Stranded Deep, and Pillars of Eternity.

Most Of The Top Selling Games Were Not Indie

It would have been pretty exciting to see the list above dominated by small teams. Who wouldn’t want to see several indie teams find success after risking it all, while sacrificing time and money to finally create a game of their own?

While there are plenty of success stories out there just like this, the truth is that most of the games above had big budgets and publisher support.

The biggest ones are, of course, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto and CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, both of which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. The majority of the other titles didn’t have budgets of that size, but still had decent amount of cash to spend.

The good news is that a few of the titles on the list were developed by smaller teams with smaller budgets.

The Mean Average Cost Of These Titles Was Around $30

It only takes a couple of minutes browsing through Steam’s marketplace to see how many games are available for a few dollars. If your budget is only between $10 and $20, you’ll have no trouble finding plenty of good titles – and not just during sales.

However, keep in mind that, just like Google Play and the App Store, many of these cheaper titles aren’t even worth the $5 you paid for them.

Judging from the top selling list, players are clearly willing to pay top dollar for the best experiences possible. GTAV, The Witcher 3, and Dying Light are a $60 download, but still have found success. The same goes for like Total War: Attila and Pillars of Eternity, with their $45.99 price. The rest of the games are between the $15 and $30, with only Besiege being less at $6.99.

[su_note]Learn more about the School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy by clicking here.[/su_note]

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