Use when designing, generating, or reviewing the spatial side of an open world — macro-layout and terrain, landmarks and sightlines, biome identity, verticality, navigation/wayfinding, signal color, exploration pull, and spatial pacing (the wonder→fear gradient, tension/release). Also use to diagnose a world that feels empty, samey, or like marker-following "icon vomit". Triggers on "open world", "world map", "world layout", "wayfinding", "triangle rule", "make the world feel alive", "points of interest", "icon vomit", "fast travel".
Instalación
Instalar con Codex o Claude Copia este prompt, pégalo en Codex, Claude u otro asistente, y deja que revise la página de la skill y la instale por ti.
Use when designing, generating, or reviewing the spatial side of an open world — macro-layout and terrain, landmarks and sightlines, biome identity, verticality, navigation/wayfinding, signal color, exploration pull, and spatial pacing (the wonder→fear gradient, tension/release). Also use to diagnose a world that feels empty, samey, or like marker-following "icon vomit". Triggers on "open world", "world map", "world layout", "wayfinding", "triangle rule", "make the world feel alive", "points of interest", "icon vomit", "fast travel".
Open-World Design
How to build open worlds that pull players through the world itself — landmarks, sightlines, and terrain that create curiosity — rather than pushing them down a dotted line to a waypoint.
When to use this
Laying out a region or macro-map (terrain, landmarks, biomes, routes)
Designing or auditing navigation and wayfinding
Diagnosing a world that feels empty, samey, or like a checklist
Tuning the emotional pacing of exploration
Scope
This skill owns the spatial discipline. Adjacent concerns live in sibling skills, cross-linked from the guide:
What fills the space and how to generate it → procedural-generation, procgen-review
Quests in that space → narrative-and-quest-design
Progression/gating math → rpg-systems
Lore the space carries → worldbuilding-and-lore
General reward/flow theory → game-design-fundamentals
How the pieces fit
GUIDE.md — the why, with exemplars and citations: terrain as a communication system, gravity & flow, interconnection, biome identity, verticality, diegetic navigation, signal color, exploration pull, spatial pacing.
CHECKLIST.md — the what to do: Do/Don't items plus the "test for" criteria you can run against a map or a generated region.
The one idea to anchor on
Make every patch of the map either visibly promising or quietly hiding something worth finding. A great open world guides through the world, not the HUD. If the player is watching a minimap arrow instead of the horizon, the world has become an obstacle between them and a waypoint — and you've lost.