There are different approaches to designing a level. Depending on the genre of game the approach changes. Also certain trends emerge depending on the genre. I studied games and their level design process for different genres and identified some trends and used tried to use those trends in games of another genres. learn more about it in this blog.

I believe that level design is working with existing game mechanics and designing a space that allows their utilization. But sometimes there’s a freedom of changing the mechanics or even adding more. I had always thought that water and swimming in FPS games are overlooked quite a lot and so I designed a hypothetical water map for PUBG which can in theory be made by making some modifications to existing game.

GTA is one of the most successful game series in open world games. GTA 5 specially I personally believe is one of the best at creating an immersive experience. In fall 2021 I took a deeper dive into how they have achieved this level of immersion. I studied the game’s narrative and different methods they use to create such an immersive experience and wrote a critique on it. If you are interested you can read my entire critique with the link here.

Portal does and amazing job at getting the players to connect with the game narrative and thus it makes an immersive experience. Its amazing to see players engaged in the game not only through the play but the one sided conversations with the NPCs. The player character never says a word and yet the entire game feels like a conversation.