.: WEREMSOFT :.

Level design is a difficult art that requires a lot of work. If you are lazy, you surely can’t do the job.

Is a common mistake leaving the responsibility of teaching the player how to play to an awful help screen that nobody reads.

Another common mistake is put screens in the game that stops the game for until the player hits a key.

And another one (the worst in my opinion) is do nothing of the above, arguing that “discover how to play is part of the game”. This is the laziest if the options. You don’t deserve the respect of anyone in the team if you do that(also, you don’t deserve the respect of the player).

This are all symptoms of laziness (yeah, I use that word very often).

In my opinion, the instructions should be in the screen all the time, but in a form of a clue, and use the thing that you want to teach to the player MUST be used to overcome a stake in the level.

The reason of this is that, if the player doesn’t understand the tip, wouldn’t be able to advance in the game. And the obsceneness of the clue will be easier to detect during the play testing sessions.

To be a successful level designer, you must be able to teach things to people in stealth mode, this means that you must be able to teach things to the people without them realize they are learning.

To achieve this, talk with people that have great skills teaching and learn from them. But don’t look only in schools or colleges. Look everywhere. In workshops, kindergartens, kitchens, the people that is great teaching has a lot of patience and makes feel the people comfortable while learning.

Now, go out and become the best level designer ever.