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Let's talk level design.
I love making games. When I was a child I would draw out Super Mario levels on paper, that years later I would translate into actual, playable levels in Super Mario Maker. Seeing your creations come to life and watching others play them is a magical experience.
Now a Fortnite Creative developer, I'd like to think that I've learned a thing or two throughout my time. By no means am I entirely qualified to talk about the subject, however in my time developing several Creative experiences that hundreds of thousands have played and enjoyed, I've learned what works and what doesn't.
Recently my Wi-Fi went down and I was unable to play Creative, and so without being able to build things myself I began to think about the fundamentals of developing a Fortnite Creative experience. How can the essentials of video game level design be applied to the average Fortnite Creative creator? Where do we fall short and how can we create authentic, engaging experiences to all players?
This is Level Design and Fortnite Creative, a closer analytical look into what it means to be a Fortnite Creative developer and how we can apply the principles of video game design to our experiences.
LEVEL DESIGN AND FORTNITE CREATIVE
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS LEVEL DESIGN?
So, what exactly is level design? Level design is the practice and process of creating the world that makes up a video game. This world will be the playing field for any player of this game; where they will explore, defeat enemies, solve puzzles and encounter and overcome obstacles.
Every game has a world. Mario Kart has the courses you race on, Minecraft has its procedurally generated, effectively infinite landscape, and Fortnite has the Battle Royale Island. In Fortnite Creative, this would be your user-generated 'Island', or experience, built from the ground up by a passionate solo developer or team.
When designing a level, a developer should strive to make it an immersive and engaging experience, where players can learn the game's mechanics and controls. There should be a sense of progression and challenge as a player ventures through this world. And if there are multiple levels, such as in a Super Mario game, there should be a gradual but noticable difficulty curve as the player completes more and more stages.
CHAPTER 2: SQUARE ONE
In Fortnite Creative, the creator has access to a wide array of tools to construct such a level. Whether they are using the default Creative engine, which involves a process of pull-and-place with various prefabs, galleries, props and devices, or the upgraded Unreal Engine for Fortnite, with its more streamlined, traditional game developer experience; it will be up to the creator to design just about everything you'll see in that world.
Sure, there are pre-made Template Islands one can use as a foundation, and many do, however this practice is often discouraged for those not at the beginning of their Creative career, with the general community much preferring experiences that are wholly unique; perhaps pushing the bar for the engine they were built in, as some do. If you are a budding creator, just starting off your journey, I see no issue with choosing one of these template islands. They provide a space built by professional developers to experiment and learn.
The same goes for the use of prefabs; an often highly-criticised practice within the community. I see why, their usage can be considered lazy as you are not creating something of your own, you're using something that already exists. But every creator starts somewhere, and I know that I am guilty of over-relying on prefabs in the past, so don't fear them. Embrace them as a starting point, but don't be afraid to get creative and make some builds of your own to populate your worlds.
CHAPTER 3: BASIC PRINCIPLES
Before talking specifics, I would like to outline what I believe the eight core principles of level design are, that can be applied to Creative.
1. Immersion: a level should be immersive and feel natural.
2. Variety: levels should be varied and interesting to keep players engaged.
3. Objectives: there should be clear goals for the players to achieve. There are exceptions to this rule, which I will touch upon later.
4. Difficulty: levels should be accessible to all players and start off at a lower skill level, with a gradual increase with progress.
5. Flow: levels should be designed in a way that they flow well and feature a balance between high-action and downtime.
6. Feedback: this links in with the objectives, in that a player should know when they've done something right, and should know where to go next.
7. Replayability: a good level is one that a player wants to experience again. Be it to find new areas or secrets, or simply for the fun of a good quality level, this is essential for player engagement.
8. Audio: levels should feature audio cues, sound effects and perhaps even a soundtrack to enhance immersion and provide feedback to the player.
With the eight principles outlined, let's discuss them one-by-one and apply them to Fortnite Creative.
CHAPTER 4: AN IMMERSIVE WORLD
The game world should fully immerse the player and feel natural. This does not mean they have to be realistic to what someone might find in the real world; even with a stylised look the world can, and should, still blend together. There should not be elements that take the player out of the experience.
For example, let's take a look at Super Mario 3D World. This game features a blocky, cartoon art style that fits the Mario series and brand. Every course set piece, background, enemy and even every UI element, will match this style. Even the music is happy and upbeat. This keeps the player engaged and makes the Mario universe feel alive and together.
Mario defeats a Goomba by stomping on it, which squishes it with a cute sound effect and provides a coin. He does not pull out a semi-automatic pistol and shoot the Goomba, splattering tomato sauce over the vibrant grass with a graphic cutscene reminiscent of a horror game. Because, as hilariously out-of-character that would be, it would not match the style and world this game has established. It would take the player out of the experience and leave them feeling less immersed overall.. and somewhat shocked at the fact that Mario just shot a Goomba.
The same applies to Fortnite Creative. Your experiences should have a consistent style that feels natural and grounded, or consistently whimsical.
I'd like to offer this picture as an example of what not to do. This photo shows a lighthouse upon a simple terrain piece, that may as well be floating in the air it's so unnaturally placed. The world this setpiece is placed in has a stylised but grounded and realistic style, and this absolutely does not fit. So, what heinous individual created this work of art? ..I did. This image comes from a rushed and messy experience a younger and less skilled me created. It haunted me for a while, but I think it's important to learn from your mistakes and always remember: one miss does not define a creator.
You can't go wrong with interactable elements too. Fortnite itself at one point had trees you could chop down, boulders you could dislodge and push around, water to swim and fish for loot in, a series of vehicles to drive on land, in air and at sea, fireflies to collect and use to start real-time fires, and a variety of consumable items around the map to take for health.
Fortnite provides a variety of different artstyles for creators to use. Easiest to isolate is the nature and foliage, such as trees and bushes, which are split into three artstyles of varying balances between realism and stylised cartoon. There is the original Fortnite style from 2017 - generally seen as the most cartoon-y, the updated 2019 version which follows the same formula but updates the models and textures to a more realistic style, and the 2022 overhaul which completely changes some models and dials back the realism somewhat.
CHAPTER 5: VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE
A level should be varied; offering a variety of unique environments and challenges to keep player investment up. I'd like to point at the first Fortnite Battle Royale Island as a case study. Upon release, the map was.. well it wasn't very interesting. But fast forward two years later, and now there are four distinct biomes filled with unique set pieces for players to play with.
The standard grass biome is simple and plays like regular old Fortnite. Think of it as the first level, but in the context of a large open world. This area is the original and has the most simple mechanics, save for some that apply to the entire map such as the vehicles or special mechanics like Slipstreams. The desert biome is similar but overall more hilly, making height an even more essential aspect of play. The snow biome introduces sliding ice effects to play with on-foot movement, and ziplines to quickly move from different areas. The jungle biome revolves around a huge volcano with interactable lava, along with geysers that will push players into the sky.
All of these areas add unique challenges and gameplay mechanics that shake up the experience both visually and in gameplay, to players moving throughout the game world. Or look at.. really any other game. Platformers have themed levels with unique mechanics. Racing games have tracks with varying layouts and obstacles. Survival games have random factors and areas with more challenging obstacles.
In Fortnite Creative, creators have access to the terrain and nature that made up those unique biomes on the Fortnite Island, which makes it incredibly easy to create a variety of interesting areas with different themes and obstacles. There are dozens of galleries, such as autumn forests, giant mushroom biomes, and corrupted wastelands; there are plenty of possibilities here with various art styles to capture the vibe the creator wants to go for.
CHAPTER 6: A GUIDING GLOW
Difficulty curves are everything. One of the key aspects of designing a level as that, when introducing complex mechanics, you don't just drop the player into the level - nor should you give them a great big block of text to read, no-one wants to read the manual. The mechanic should be introduced in a relaxed environment as the focus, so the player can test with it and learn it, before progressing to more tricky areas with a mix of various mechanics. It is essential to introduce the mechanic through gameplay, rather than a tutorial at the start that people either won't read at all or will almost instantly forget.
Take a look at New Super Mario Bros Wii. Entering the level World 1-Castle, we can see the core mechanic is this cog that spins and pushes the player. There is no way to die to this first cog - unless you run out of time - so this is a stress-free environment where the player can get to grips with this new set piece. But moving on throughout the level, we start to encounter cogs moving against each other, threatening to kill Mario. From the midway point onward, the cogs are mixed with scattered enemies like the previously introduced Dry Bones, and the ever-present threat of lava below. Even though this is all one level, the difficulty builds over time as the new mechanic is mixed with previously established threats and gradually more difficult scenarios to platform through.
This applies also to the idea that the player should know their objective. A player in a level should always have a clear idea, whether explicitly stated to them or subtly hinted through worldbuilding, of what to do and where to go to progress. They should not feel lost and confused.
This can be as obvious as a UI element directly telling them what to do, which in Fortnite Creative could be a Tracker, HUD Message or even a full HUD Pop Up - although the last is the most intrusive to the gameplay flow and as such is the most likely to break immersion. Or this could be something more subtle to hint the player to their goal, such as graffiti of an arrow pointing in the right direction, clear but perhaps hidden amongst the environment.
CHAPTER 7: PITSTOPS
The flow of a level is incredibly important to keeping the player engaged without overwhelming them. Spaces of downtime are essential to the flow and balance of the experience. PVE maps in Fortnite Creative maps often already implement downtime, in the short waits between each wave of enemies that allow players to regroup, heal themselves, upgrade their loot, and prepare to fight the next wave.
I look towards the original Sonic the Hedgehog for a case study on this. The very first level in the series, Green Hill Zone, is a masterclass in level design. It balances high-action sections where the player can enjoy Sonic's speed and blast through anything in his path, with slower, more maticulus platforming sections that both add some challenge and give the player some time to breathe.
I think that out of all of the fundamentals of level design, this one is generally applied the best to Fortnite Creative already, however that does not undermine how important it is to have a balance between challenging sections and moments of rest.
CHAPTER 8: FEEDBACK & REWARDS
Players should recieve clear feedback on their performance and progress, such as via visual or audio cues such as the addition of score or a sound effect dependant on if they did well or not.
Fortnite Creative has Gold and other materials that can be displayed on the HUD and used for other things, such as purchasing items at Vending Machines. These are useful incentives to motivate players to keep going, for example if the player earns 1 Gold for every zombie they kill, and then they can go on to buy an upgraded weapon for 25 Gold. This essentially works as an incentive to keep playing, as they have unlocked a shiny new weapon that can now defeat those dastardly zombies even more quickly.
CHAPTER 9: PLAY ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU
When designing a level, the player should be encouraged to replay them. This can be to retrace their steps and find new secrets, to improve their performance and gameplay through challenges or timed missions, or simply for the fun of replaying a level.
If a level is entirely locked off after completion, the player has no reason to keep playing after they beat all the levels or get stuck on a hard one. They should be allowed, or better, encouraged to replay levels for fun or for new rewards. So if there are elements that need to be activated to complete a level, such as a key being used to open a chest, make sure it resets and can be used again after the level is completed the first time.
CHAPTER 10: MUSIC TO MY EARS
Audio is criminally underused in Fortnite Creative. There are two key devices to add audio to a level. The Speaker will play a sound effect when activated, and the Radio will play music or ambient sounds within a set radius.
A while ago I was talking to fellow creator Dood Creates, when I discovered that their map Fortlite had Radio devices littered across the game world to make it feel more immersive and alive. For example, a cave had dripping sounds and glistering ores, whereas a bridge over shallow water could be heard creaking. This is an idea not many have implemented, particularly in the Battle Royale genre that competes with Fortlite, and is something that I have since been inspired to implement into my own creations.
CHAPTER 11: MEMORY!!
Managing all of this is difficult, yes. Fortnite Creative has a limit of one hundred thousand memory that can be used in the entire experience at any one time, so the idea of implementing all of this is daughnting, especially when looking at the memory on some devices.
(really, a TREE costs 9,000??)
But, but, but, it is absolutely worth the cost. Some devices are low cost, such as the Radio and Speaker combined being less than one thousand, and they add so much immersion and can be linked to other devices to create audio cues, that they are more than worth the memory they cost to place down.
Of course, every device and prop you place into the world is an investment on how valuable they are for the memory, and it is important to always consider what you can include versus what you should. You may not be able to create a vast open world that features literally every device, and that's okay - if you have a cohesive environment filled with fun, balanced challenges and things to do, that's more than enough.
CHAPTER 12: CONCLUSION
That is my analysis of the core principles of video game level design and their application to Fortnite Creative. I hope this video essay was useful to at least someone out there. Like I said at the beginning, I am by no means totally qualified to talk on the subject, this is just my analysis using my experience creating in Fortnite and playing video games since I was pretty much still in the womb.
Thank you for reading. Consider using code Jakus to support me #ad, and I'll see you all in the next weird thought piece about things that really don't require that much thought.