Resources

Hey everyone,

I’m a level designer with experience in Unreal Engine 5, specializing in VR and immersive experiences. I’ve worked on projects like a VR escape room (Riddler Ransom), a multiplayer racing game, and interactive environments for Android VR. I’m looking for volunteer opportunities to contribute my skills, gain more experience, and collaborate with teams working on interesting projects.

If anyone needs help with level design, optimization, or world-building, feel free to reach out! Would love to be part of something cool.

Thanks!

portfolio link: https://www.behance.net/aniketbhattac2

I have a little experience with Blender and with Unity by now, but I am really having trouble conceiving of a good workflow to create big buildings with interiors and exteriors that flow into each other, and can be explored by the player. It's really the technical side of making such models in 3d with Blender and Unity, that I'm struggling with.

Hi, I am working on a game concept as part of my course. The name of my game is called The Origins of the Vikings. The concept of my game is about a young kid that has just been born and allows the player to experience the life of a kid that is born into a viking fighting family. The game will then cut to the boy transforming into a man in a cutscene and continues to fight for his clan and leads them into battle.

One of my refence for this game concept is, Assassin's Creed Valhalla. The game will be a Third person action, hack and slash, story driven game. The Visuals I want for the game are realistic and I also want clear, good audio sounds.

What do you think about this game concept? What could I improve?
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I am also working on a survey about the evolution of visuals and audio throughout the years. It would be helpful if you could do it so I can have feedback. This is for my coursework for level 2 gaming.

https://forms.office.com/e/UCjygdQAyE

Hi everyone! I'm new to level design, and I’d love to hear your insights. How do you determine when a level you've built is ready to move beyond the basic blocking stage? Also, at what point do you feel it’s ready for a simple, early playtest?

At the current moment, I am working on a design for a Hadean and Eoarchean-inspired SMB1 level in Super Mario Maker 2.

I would appreciate assistance on how I could make a proper traditional-like SMB1 level design while still incorporating the inspiration I had, so any rule-sets for SMB1 levels or any ideas relating to how I can incorporate the Hadean and Eoarchean era would be nice.

I want to create an open-world map for a dark fantasy game and am currently looking for the best engine to use. I’ve worked with both Unity and Unreal Engine, and I have decent knowledge of Unity. However, if there’s a particularly useful tool for map-making, I’m open to switching to Godot or Unreal Engine.

I’m unsure if Unity’s built-in options are sufficient for this type of project. Do you know of any tools, plugins for Unity that could help with designing an open-world dark fantasy map? I’m looking for the best tools or engines to bring this vision to life.

Tldr; I'm looking for best tools-engines to design a open world dark fantasy map.

I was trying to make a level for my 3D platformer but got stuck and ended up making a level that didn’t fit the game and was too hard, I was wondering how to make good level design especially if you have the concept but don’t know how to execute it?

Hello everyone :D

I've always liked the idea of game jams that have a very specific style given as a requirement, usually connected to the location/environment. I think it's the level designer in me, or a worldbuilder, or both. I could never find a jam that focused specifically on that, so I went ahead and made one myself.

https://itch.io/jam/orceard-jam-1

🍋 Orceard Jam will be a 10-day game jam that focuses on themes, styles, aesthetics. Whether it be an overgrown greenhouse, a wooden castle, a skeletal trainyard, a dark bunker, an aquatic library, or a simple lemon orchard, this jam is all about the bizarre environments - vertical slice, asset creation, walking sim, anything playable is allowed. For the first edition the theme is: lemon orchard.

I could use some feedback as this is the first ever jam I'm trying to host and have no idea what I'm doing. Of course it isn't helping that I have no community behind it, just a few of my friends that joined it to help me with numbers initially. I want to make my game for the jam for sure, without participating in the ranking for the prize of course.

Hey, I'm making a game centered around a crew of professional criminals robbing various location. I decided one of them should be a formula race track with money in a secret underground vault. I got the idea for the setting from Hitman but I want to make it as different from it as possible. I find designing the race track easy but the surrounding area, not so much. Since I don't know anything about formula races, I need some ideas, what should I add, what should I avoid adding etc.

Hey all, I recently put together a team for a game we are all working on and it became painfully obvious to me that I can't fill in for every role that is missing. I originally thought I would do the level design on top of the rest of the work I do already, but I underestimated the difficulty of the work and overestimated the amount of time I would have to dedicate to it.

So my question is, where is the best place to look for new or inexperienced level designers? As my team is made up of people who are doing this on the side as a hobby in hopes of launching the game one day. We would rather someone who is familiar with level design, but is also kind of just starting off as well. No one is getting paid unless the game is published, so this really would be a hobby more than a job.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling.

Edit: Our game is called Year of the Wolf and it is a metrovania type action adventure game.

I'm currently learning the craft, and started wondering what tools/workflow other people use. I believe it was Steve Lee to say in one of his videos that level design is a niche without a proper dedicated tool to this craft.

So, how do you approach level design?

Me personally, I use Unity and its built-in features, ProBuilder and a bunch of assets from the asset store. All combined, they cover practically everything I need, except for advanced 3D models, for which I'll need to learn Blender.

I'd love to know whether someone had experience with the same set I have, and perhaps your thoughts on whether it's good enough, or why you switched from it.
Alternatively, I'd love to know about other approaches, maybe flaws you face, or any tips your have:)

Have you ever wondered what is a strategy that companies like Playrix in Homescapes/Gardenscapes or Dream Games in Royal Match use to release their levels? The games I mentioned have well over 10k levels, what does it take to release so many levels and keep the players engaged? I heard that Playrix redesigns their levels in a way that they change the way the board looks. What makes them do that, difficulty tweaking or...? What kind of strategy do they use when releasing so many levels?

You have to get the green square to the top of the black zone by placing down the pentominoes(coloured ones), the brown squares are squares that start in the position and cannot be moved. The green square can only move through 1 wide pathways with no forks because of the story. I suck at level design how to make them better

Sorry if this is a stupid question. Is there a free/open source site/software/app/tool to draw in detail a map for your level? I have the level in mind but I think It would be better if I could draw it to have more clarity on what I'm going to do. To trasform the vague idea of the level from my mind to a first draft that I can see from up top and work on "on paper" before doing It in engine. I don't know if I made myself clear, I'm not great at expressing myself 😅

Basically the title, what kind of concept art(s) would make your lives easier or smoother / more fun lol. For a God of War / Cyberpunk type mechanic game ? Working on my portfolio rn. Wanting to choosen shots. Any help would be appreciated.

By “chugging” I meant slowdown/lag. I heard SRB2 already lags like crazy on the fan-made SRB2 Switch port in later areas, heck, even the 32X port right now removed slopes entirely and made huge level design changes.

Huge level design that the Saturn wouldn’t be able to handle isn’t the only issue, we all know that game’s DOOM engine hates the idea of loop-de-loops, which mind you, even Sonic X-Treme showcased in it’s trailers, though that felt kind of automatic at the time, kinda what fake SRB2 loop-de-loops did aswell, completely automatic.

Though what I do like about SRB2 is it’s use of slopes in 2.2, but that STILL isn’t used that often, so you are mostly met with generic platformer design and typical gameplay with occasional Sonic cues, whilst the Classic Sonic Games, 24/7, had you dealing with either constant fast speeds/trying to manage it, or dealing with constant gimmicks/shenanigans (like the flowing water in Hydrocity, or the MANY things to do and avoid in Marble Zone.)

If you had a SRB2 level translated into 2D, expect exploring flat land at first, jumping onto multiple flat platforms, all this being in a mostly linear format, with the occasional “gimmick” every few minutes, and if you are finally lucky, A SLOPE! YIPPEE! Only for it to end fast as hell.

Even if we did get a Saturn Sonic game where the devs actually locked in like SRB2, it would instead be under a new engine and have none of the flaws mentioned above.

One of the things I struggle with while doing levels for my game is level design. It is easily the thing I find most difficult.

One aspect that really gets me is the order of the levels I create. I'm not going to know the desired difficulty of level 4, if I only have done level 1. If I did levels 1, 2, and 3, then I can "feel" what the difficulty curve is like and have a good idea of what will suit for level 4.

The downside to this is that sometimes I get what may be a good idea for a later level but it's so far down in the game that I have no idea that it'll actually work once all prior levels are in place.

What's the usual way to go about this? Do people just make levels willy nilly and slap them in where they feel is suitable? Do they do it linearly like I've been doing?

I feel like I chase my tail more than necessary and also overthink it at the same time :D

Hi!
I work as Game Environment artist for 5 years at Tencent.
Things getting really boring specially since last 2 years as I have been assigned to prop creation only.
or sometimes buggy in-house engine from 90s

In my free time I do make games using Unity C# and have some knowledge on Unreal Blueprint as well.

I saw some Udemy courses's intro, felt very basic.

Any recommended guide/Youtuber to follow or suggestion?

I am wanting to work on another project, but I am awful when it comes to designing worlds/levels for games. I have a lot of really good assets to use, but I have no idea how to actually make something nice with them. Are there any books or something that you'd recommend for somebody like me (more of a programmer) to learn basic level-design?