level-design
Level design — space that plays before it's pretty
Shape the space, the rhythm, and the encounters so the player always knows where to go, never gets bored, and feels smart for exploring. Prove it in grey boxes; add art last.
This skill owns the craft of physical space and its play: how a level is laid out, how it reads, how its intensity rises and falls, how encounters teach, and where reward hides. It is engine-agnostic — every technique here is validated in a blockout, then handed to an engine skill for the actual tooling.
The pipeline: blockout -> greybox -> playtest -> art (never art-first)
Lock the player's metrics first — height, jump, reach, cover, door/corridor widths — and build all geometry as multiples of them. Guessing widths breaks traversal after the space is full of dependent geometry, which is why this comes before the first box. → references/blockout-to-art.md
| Stage | You build | You answer | Gate to next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blockout | Primitive geometry only (boxes/planes at true metrics). No materials, no props. | Does the space flow? Are timings/distances right? Can I find my way? | Layout & traversal feel right. |
| Greybox | Blockout + temp neutral materials, placeholder lighting, stand-in enemies/interactables. | Does it read? Does the fight/encounter work? Is pacing right? | Encounters and readability hold up in playtest. |
| Playtest | Nothing — you watch fresh players. | Where do they hesitate, get lost, die, skip? | Fixes are cheap because it's still grey. |
| Art pass | Meshes, materials, VFX, final lighting, audio — serving the proven layout. | Does art reinforce the guidance the greybox already established? | Ship. |
Iterate blockout↔playtest many times before art: changing a grey box is minutes, changing a finished art set-piece is days — so never model or texture a space you have not already proven fun. Full stage detail, the metrics block, and the art-pass handoff checklist → references/blockout-to-art.md.