Semester 1 Objectives

My key area of study this semester has been the relationship between mechanics and level design. These two subjects are the fundamentals of game design and what makes a game a game. Mechanics are useless without the player being able to apply and cause a reaction with those tools and levels can’t even be considered a game until the player can have some input and cause a reaction in the game universe. Last month I did a quick exercise of performing reverse level design on some existing popular video games. The purpose of it was to see how easy/difficult it would be to map level designs so they could be read by anybody else on a team. So really the three keywords this semester for my work are communication, mechanics and level designs. All three equally important as one another.

From my objectives I sought to find a method where I could apply and learn these skills. I suggested in an early blog some possible ideas. The two that have stuck with me are:

Exercise One: Create a unique game concept based around an existing mechanic from an existing video game.

Exercise Two: Take an existing video game and create a unique mechanic that can be used within the game. Demonstrate the unique mechanic in a detailed level design for that game.

These two exercises are good ways to explore both ends of the mechanic-level design relationship. In exercise one the thinking revolves more around the level/game design my work is going to take place in. In exercise two the mechanics are the starting point and the levels are to be designed around those mechanics. Both exercises will be useful as they let me to both express my creativity whilst at the same time working under constrains. At the end of the semester I will hopefully have examples of both exercises. The first task of work is to select the existing video games for exercise one and two that I will be working with.