Elements of game design - part 4

What is a good game environment design? Is it one that takes your breath away and makes you stop a game for a while to take a look around just to appreciate the view? Well, yes. But if you are overlooking the surrounding while playing a game it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was poorly designed. Sometimes it has to be created in that way not to distract you from the plot and in that case it’s good too because you can be dragged into a game without analysing the surrounding. If the environ takes your attention from playing because at the back of your head you keep thinking that something is wrong it’s a sign that Level Designer or the Game Environment Artist messed up. For example below you can see a picture of a first person shooter set up in Mario’s world. It just hurts the mind, doesn’t it? Well... maybe that example was a bit over the top, but you know what I mean…

In general good environment design should support the atmosphere and narration of the game. In my opinion one of the best instances of that can be found in game Portal. At the first look it’s a first person puzzle game that takes place in some kind of test chambers. Levels look quite alike; all are clean bright and insipid. However, in some places, you can find a hole in a wall or an open ventilation shaft and if you go inside you start to realize that there is something wrong with this place. Hidden rooms are small, dirty, and gloomy and their walls are covered with some writings. When you find one of those you can’t stop looking for another one to get some more clues. It’s a great way to tell the story through the environment.

Another example of an outstanding environment design can be found in the game Prince of Persia. It’s easy to say that the developers of this game put a lot of attention to the look of levels, and no wonder, because the main gameplay element is concentrating on climbing the walls and jumping form edge to edge. I admire the concepts of this game artist David Levy as he had to create in them believable levels with magic atmosphere but also had to considered the way in which player would interact with the surrounding.

I know that I’ve mentioned this game sooooo many times in this blog, but I can’t just simply write a post about environments in games and not talk about Shadow of the Colossus! Most of its events occur within Forbidden Land where you have to defeat 16 colossi. Each colossus dwells in a unique lair, so you can find here mountains, deserts, caves and many more… All of them are beautifully designed and they emphasize character of each colossus.

Environments are just as important as any other element of game design and they have to work well when put together with characters. Wrong decisions in developing them can easily affect the player’s perception of the game. 

Links:
http://vyle-art.com/
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_game_environment_design.ph p