Use when designing, generating, or reviewing the craft of an individual level, zone, or encounter — layout, wayfinding, structural type, lock-and-key gating, antepieces, arena design, in-level pacing, and the greybox process. Also use to diagnose levels where players get lost, challenge feels unfair, pacing drags, or teaching moments land flat. Triggers on "level design", "level layout", "greybox", "blockout", "wayfinding", "sightlines", "lock and key", "arena design", "encounter design", "the level feels confusing", "players get lost", "chokepoint", "flanking route", "intensity curve", "antepiece", "teach the mechanic", "critical path", "leading lines", "weenie", "breadcrumbs", "level feels boring", "players don't know where to go".
Use when designing, generating, or reviewing the craft of an individual level, zone, or encounter — layout, wayfinding, structural type, lock-and-key gating, antepieces, arena design, in-level pacing, and the greybox process. Also use to diagnose levels where players get lost, challenge feels unfair, pacing drags, or teaching moments land flat. Triggers on "level design", "level layout", "greybox", "blockout", "wayfinding", "sightlines", "lock and key", "arena design", "encounter design", "the level feels confusing", "players get lost", "chokepoint", "flanking route", "intensity curve", "antepiece", "teach the mechanic", "critical path", "leading lines", "weenie", "breadcrumbs", "level feels boring", "players don't know where to go".
Level Design
How to craft a level — or generate one — that guides players through space so they always know where to go and why, teaches through the environment instead of a tutorial pop-up, paces intensity as a rhythm of peaks and valleys, and validates all of it in blockmesh before a single art asset is committed.
Tier: universal craft (→ gamestack-core). Applies to every genre that has levels, rooms, or encounters. The macro/world spatial layer lives in open-world-design; this skill owns the level/encounter craft.
When to use this
Laying out a level or zone — structure type, critical path, arenas, shortcuts
Designing or auditing wayfinding (players getting lost or marker-following)
Authoring antepieces and teaching sequences for new mechanics
Designing or diagnosing encounter/arena propositions
Plotting and tuning in-level intensity curves
Specifying a blockmesh-first process a generator can follow
Scope
This skill owns the level/encounter spatial craft layer. Adjacent concerns live in sibling skills:
What to generate and how to validate generated content → procedural-generation, procgen-review
Combat-specific feel (hit-stop, telegraphing, enemy feel) within arenas → combat-design
In-level pacing as part of a session-wide arc → pacing-and-the-player-journey
Signposting, landmarks, signal color, silhouette → art-direction-and-readability
Teaching through space as part of the onboarding arc → onboarding-and-teaching
General reward/flow/motivation theory → game-design-fundamentals
How the pieces fit
GUIDE.md — the cited why, in six sub-domains: guidance language (critical path, breadcrumbing, leading lines, weenies, light/color, affordances); structure & gating (structural types, lock-and-key, interconnection/shortcuts, Metroidvania loop); teaching through space (antepiece, intro→develop→twist→conclude, the gym); encounter/arena design (arena proposition, cover, chokepoints, flanking, verticality); in-level pacing (intensity curve, rest beats, reward placement); and the greybox process (blockmesh, metrics, playtest iteration). Each rule carries an exemplar + source, a test-for criterion, the named failure mode, and the procedural/headless implication.
CHECKLIST.md — Do/Don't + machine-checkable Test-for criteria, grouped by sub-domain. Written to be enforced as validators in a generation loop.
The one idea to anchor on
Guide the player through the space itself — not the HUD. Landmarks, light, leading lines, and affordances must tell the player where to go and what to do before a minimap arrow ever has to try. If a player is watching a minimap instead of the horizon, the level has become an obstacle between them and a waypoint.
