Action Games - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 402

LEVELS
Designers often group action game levels by theme. All the levels in a themed set
have a similar appearance and a similar set of enemies or obstacles to overcome. A set
of themed levels usually ends in an encounter with a big boss , who must be defeated.
In some cases, the player must acquire powerups or gain skills while completing
tasks in the levels to defeat that set's big boss and progress to the next set of levels.
Each level presents the player with a variety of challenges, and failure to surmount
them eventually causes the player to lose the game—whether it's dancing well in a
dance game or shooting things in a shooter. However, in most such games, the
sequence of the challenges in a given level remains the same from one play session
to the next. Except for the occasional wildcard enemy (described later in this chap-
ter), the player can be confident that if a given region contains certain challenges
the first time it's played, the same region will contain exactly the same challenges
the next time. Thus, players eventually finish action games by learning what tasks
lie ahead and how to accomplish them through repeated attempts.
As a designer, you will find that levels are easier to balance when they contain
fixed, rather than randomized, challenges. However, this approach makes the game
repetitious, and that makes the game unattractive to two groups: those who don't
like repetitive play and those who don't have a lot of leisure time. To avoid alienat-
ing those groups, include a save-and-reload feature so the player can restart the
game in the middle whenever he loses. Alternatively, use checkpoints , as described
in the next section.
Level design is discussed in more detail in Chapter 12, “General Principles of
Level Design.”
PLANNING YOUR PACING
As Chapter 12 explained, the most important level design principle for action games
is variety of pacing. Game developers often waste a lot of time and money rebuild-
ing game levels because something just doesn't feel right—the pacing is wrong.
In two valuable Gamasutra articles, “Gameplay Fundamentals Revisited: Harnessed
Pacing and Intensity” and “Gameplay Fundamentals Revisited, Part 2: Building a
Pacing Structure,” Mike Lopez argues that to avoid poor pacing, you should plan
the pacing of your entire game in advance, during the pre-production phase of
development (Lopez, 2008a and 2008b). (Note that this is not the same as the con-
cept stage of game design. Pre-production takes place during the early part of the
elaboration stage.) He recommends a nine-step process to create an intensity and
pacing plan for your game, summarized briefly here:
1. Brainstorm. Think of locations for your levels, exciting moments of action asso-
ciated with those locations (such as “the building collapses”), and generic moments
of excitement that are independent of location (such as suddenly facing a powerful
enemy). At this point you're not deciding on the sequence of these events, just