ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what game levels do to create user experiences and then discusses different tools used for level design both on and off the computer. If game levels are executions of gameplay—the system of rules that create a user experience—then levels are also the medium that game designers use to express the gameplay to players. Many designers argue that a level’s primary function is to teach players how to play a game. In games, narrative descriptors contained within a game’s dialog, art, and symbolism interact with formal and structural elements of game levels—rules of movement and level geometry. Spatial design for games has a close relationship with grids and graph paper. It is the primary tool of many who have created their own maps for the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
