Level Design

When it comes to level design it's a very broad topic to discuss, when it comes to making a good game level design is vital. It decides how engaged a player will be, the difficulty of the game, how balanced a game is, it affects the story of a game and will steer the direction the game is going in.Having a good variation of obstacles, heights and making things such as objectives and enemies obvious to the player is an important aspect of design.

Level design changes greatly depending on the genre of game you are working with, for example you wouldn't have a the same design for a Strategy game as you would have for a FPS. In an FPS you need balanced maps, for example in a multiplayer map you want both sides of the map to be similar or have equal advantages and disadvantages to the teams which are spawning on either side. A good example of this being done is in the Gears of War games, they have very simple and symmetrical maps which are easy to understand and very balanced as both teams have an equal starting point.