Level Up.pdf

340 LEVEL 12 The Nuts and Bolts of Mechanics
items can be placed by designers and artists into the level to make it feel
more like a real place. Sometimes they act as barricades or obstacles for
the player to avoid, jump over, or take cover behind:
• Desks and chairs
• Parked cars
• Barricades
• Statues and gravestones
• Trees and shrubbery
• Fences and walls
• Potted plants and water coolers.
Thinking up props can be an entertaining exercise in free association and
brainstorming. Start with the predictable items that you would find in your
level and go from there. Here ’ s an exercise — come up with as many items
and props for the following level themes:
• Easy: the street of a Wild West town
• Medium: a supervillain ’ s lair
• Hard: Chinese clothing factory.
Pro tip: if you find your brainstorming ideas getting silly or filthy, you know
you ’ ve reached a good place to stop. Let it settle overnight or for a day or
two before starting again. Or take a research break and look for more
inspiration in books, games, movies, or the interwebs.
Don ’ t be satisfied with merely thinking up items to decorate your world —
allow your players to interact with them. Start with natural reactions. If you
shoot a water cooler it should explode in a watery splash. Let players knock
over light items or shove around heavy ones. Let players closely examine
interesting pieces of statues, bookshelves, or paintings.
You can shoot or smash props to access new areas or yield treasure. In the
Lego games (like Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman), you can pretty much
destroy anything — all yielding studs, the game ’ s version of money. There ’ s
nothing more satisfying than busting up junk to get tons of treasure, but try
not to overdo it as it can turn your carefully designed gameplay into a
mindless smash - fest.
Crates are breakable items that yield goodies and double as platforms, but
they ’ re also overused clich é s that have become a joke within the gaming
industry; visually boring and, frankly, a lazy fallback for designers and artists
who don ’ t want to burn the brainpower to think up more interesting
breakable objects.