- Concept
- Enviroment to exist
- Beginning
- End
- Goal
- Challenge to overcome between the player and the goal
- Reward
- Way of handling failure
These are the "building blocks" to designing a level that Ed Bryne talks about. He also mentions that for a long and enjoyable play experience it is sometimes necessary to add more of everything, more goals, more challenges, and frequently multiple endings however these things are generally found in larger games such as Little Big Planet, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mario. There's a whole list of games, but I wont go through them all.
Ed Bryne used these building blocks to break up Tettris, I applied these steps to Kingdom Hearts to break it down a little.
- Concept - Adventure to different worlds in search of your friends Riku and Kairi.
- Enviroment to exist - Travelling through space to unlock new world levels.
- Beginning - Sora's (Main Character) best friend Riku sets you challenges to complete, after which Riku and Kairi dissapear into the darkness and Sora sets out to find his friends again and return to their island home.
- Ending - Sora, Riku, and Micky need to close the "Door to Darkness" on both sides, so Sora remains in the realm of light and continues to try to find Riku again, while Micky and Riku stay behind in the darkness to keep it at bay.
- Goal - Open the paths that connect the worlds to find Riku and Kairi
- Challenge to overcome between the player and the game - Defeat different types of enemies and boss' and complete challenge mini-games.
- Reward - New abilities are unlocked as you level up and new and more powerful Key-Blade upgrades become available through completing worlds.
- Way of handling failure - Checkpoints and Save areas.
These are just the basics of the game broken up and categorised, the story is what makes things more complicated through keeping certain infomation a mystery. However games don't have to have a stories. Ed Bryne Says in this article " A story can enhance a level and give the players infomation about what they are expected to do, what they might need to avoid and what they may seek... game-play is what drives games"
And I couldn't agree more, without the joy of playing the game the player will just get bored and shelf it, and as games designers that's something we need to avoid at all costs, because it means we would have failed.
