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".
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.
