How to?
Artists often complain that they lack ideas. It's actually not that difficult to search for and find interesting ones. You just need to learn the basic principles of forming these ideas. These principles can help you see things in the world around you that may become the basis of a game level or even a whole game in the future.
It's hard to come up with something from scratch, that's how our brain works. But we can synthesize something new on some basis. This way the key to discovering an interesting idea is contained in the ability to be the first to synthesize something new from a combination of the existing one. And it doesn't matter it was created by man or by nature.
Where to get that very inspiration?
So where do you get ideas to rethink and combine? In fact, we are surrounded by millions of different ideas. For example, most video game developers, when asked what inspired them to create a particular game, almost always mention the film industry. Cinema is a treasure trove of potential game situations, impressive visual scenes, and interesting locations. Also, architecture is another great source of inspiration. It offers an endless variety of geometric shapes and solutions for designing game levels.
And, of course, I can't help but mention the games themselves. You may get inspired by playing. The more games you see, the more you can learn from other people's mistakes and borrow good finds. Try to not just play games, but try to analyze them and understand how other developers created their levels, what tricks they used in doing so, and how they have fitted real-life examples into the game environment.
Step one.
So how exactly do you form an idea? First, try to define a base setting for your level. Just one or two words - what does it look like in general, as a physical location? Something arctic, related to ice, snow or tundra? Or maybe it's some kind of dungeon, grotto or cave? Or a city? Old? Post-apocalyptic? Or a city of the future? Jungle maybe? Or mountains? Imagine some place in your head. It could be a combination, why not? You may take any specific geographical location, if you want.
Step two.
Okay, you have found a setting, what next? Now let's add a theme to this. The theme is something more abstract, rather about the mood or atmosphere. It could be some style or historical period or weather or event maybe.
Let's say I choose a forest as a setting.
As a theme it's paranormal, ghost, mystical.
Or another planet.
One more thing to remember.
Try to avoid using only clichés. By exploiting stereotyped representations of the real world, we show the player the game environment that he has seen many times in real life. Actually this approach works very well, but the problem here is different, and it is called the lack of a memorable element. And here a special structure consisting of two elements will help you to solve the problem. The first element is the main idea, which is a set of clichés (a template image of a location familiar to the player). And the second element is a special ingredient that makes the whole idea memorable.
One of the most effective ways to make your level memorable is to combine several topics at once in one bottle. Here the special ingredient will be the unusual contrast that arises as a result of the combination of two or more completely different themes. The more challenging this contrast between themes looks, the more likely your level will be remembered.
Another way to create interesting and memorable contrast is to place something unusual in a normal environment.
Another special ingredient of your level can be an expressive and memorable image, which is created using special effects (cloudy weather, hurricane, flooding, fire) and lighting (special time of day, interesting color schemes).
And the last trick that is worth mentioning is the original gameplay also has a chance to become a feature of your level. Here, in order to understand for sure what it is about, it is probably better to give an example. Dishonored 2 mission called "A Crack in the Slab" is based entirely on unique time-jumping gameplay mechanics. The player is given a magic item that allows him to switch between two parallel times. Through a special glass, the player can see what is happening at the moment in another dimension. In the past, the mansion is inhabited and well guarded, while in the present it is already abandoned and inhabited by cadaverous wasps and wild dogs.
The presence of several special elements at once ensures maximum memorability of the game level.
Thanks for reading,
See you next time!