Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
ChAptEr 10
and Mechanics
In this chapter and the next, we shift our focus from purely emergent game mechanics
to mechanics as a tool for progression design. We look at the ways that game levels
organize their challenges into missions and how they interweave a story with the
player's progress. Although people often think of
level design
as creating spaces or
using software level design tools, game mechanics play an equally important role in
defining how a level provides challenges to the player.
In this chapter, we investigate how to integrate level design with the design of game
mechanics. We look at different kinds of progress that take place in games and
address how levels structure play. We also discuss ways that you can use levels to
introduce game mechanics in such a way that players can get into the game easily.
A game's mechanics should provide players with enjoyable gameplay, and most
games offer players a structured environment and an orderly progression of goals as
part of the experience. Creating the environment and the goals is part of the level
designer's job. Level design also introduces the players to the game's mechanics a
little at a time. In this chapter, we will focus on the role that levels play in structur-
ing the gameplay experience. In the terminology of Kyle Gabbler (see the sidebar
“Make the Toy First” in Chapter 1, “Designing Game Mechanics”), thus far we have
been focusing on using mechanics to construct a toy. Now it is time to use that toy
to create a playground.
Structuring Play
We generally think of toys as enablers for free-form play, in which players can set
their own goals or play without any goals at all. Games come with a predefined goal
that specifies exactly under what conditions you beat the game or your opponent;
this is also called the game's
victory condition
. Victory conditions can be very simple,
such as to destroy all enemy ships or collect a certain number of points. Some goals
are unachievable in practice: No matter how many aliens you destroy in
Space Invaders
,
the game continues to throw fresh waves at you until you lose your last life and
the game is over. In this case, the real goal of the game is not to defeat all the alien
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