Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

gameplay foil. (A “hard” rule is one for which no exceptions exist, such as “Avoid
frustrating your player!”) When it comes to environmental design, the softer rules often
give way to solid testing feedback, player comments about what works and what
doesn’t. We’ll learn all about this process in Chapter 7. It’s up to you and your team
to figure out why something works or doesn’t work. Testing feedback is the single
most important measure of whether you’ve succeeded or failed at building a great
venue for play.
If you create a stock point or power-up point (a space with a variety of power-ups
like health or ammunition available together) in a dead-end area, the player may
have to risk much to get at it because the corridors leading to the dead-end area may
have high traffic—plenty of enemies stalking the player. This suggests that having
multiple entry and exit points is a good thing. If certain areas have only one way in
and one way out (see Figure 1-2), it becomes pretty obvious where a player might
take their first step toward their own undoing. It’s generally better to have multiple
entry and exit points so that players can flee a situation easily, and so that their arrival/departure
point is not so easily predicted (see Figure 1-3).
FIGURE 1-2
Player caught in a bottleneck
C H A P T E R 1
7
Previsualization