The Level Design Book

Building games that can be understood at a glance

Building games that can be understood at a glance - Zach Gage, GDC 2018

Game design is simple, actually

So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design. One: Fun There are a lot of things people call “fun.” But most of them are not u…

The Video Game Library | All Books on Videogames

The Video Game Library is a site that celebrates books about videogames. From artbooks and children's books to novelizations and biographies. Indie writers to best-selling authors. Atari to Xbox. Come have a look and discover some books.

Designing Games to Learn

As I've been writing this series of newsletters on learning and video games, there's been a spectre lurking in the background. Video games and education. Edutainment.

I/O systems for level scripting – joe wintergreen internet zone

This week I built a Source Engine style input/output (I/O) system for level scripting in Sleight of Hand, and if you don’t know what that is or means, you have that in common with most game developers. It’s an astonishingly useful thing to have on any game with level scripting (it’s how Valve’s games do it all the way from Half-Life to Half-Life Alyx). It’s empowering to level designers, and the time and work it stands to save you is unquantifiable but immense. It’s also simple and easy! I’m gonna jot down here how mine (in Unreal) works, but also make a case for the feature in the first place, because like all the most impactful good ideas, most people don’t see the point right away. Alas, I fear I will have to use headings.

80 Level

80 LEVEL is an industry-leading platform for game developers,, digital artists, animators, video game enthusiasts, CGI and VFX specialists. Join us to learn about new workflows, discuss new tools and share your work

Unreal Engine Plugins That I Reckon Are Good

Mesh Tool by Nate Mary is a general modeling tool and the best way to do level design in the editor, though UE5’s CubeGrid tool is really good too (but has fewer functions than this). You can use both together, both just output meshes. I asked Nate to add Hotspot Texturing like Source 2 has, and the madman did it. The pictures above are all of MeshTool stuff, all of it whipped up real quick.

4-Layers, A Narrative Design Approach

Introduction This blog post will be about a new way to approach narrative design in games - the 4 Layers Approach. It is based on a GDC ...

“The Door Problem”

Game design is one of those nebulous terms to people outside the game industry that’s about as clear as the “astrophysicist” job title is to me. It’s also my job, so I find myself explaining what game design means to a lot of people from different backgrounds, some of whom don’t know anything about games.

Mindful Design

A high quality, expansive video course that will elevate your design skills to a level you never thought was achievable.

Designing Imaginative Environments by Nathan Fowkes

Join industry veteran Nathan Fowkes on a deep dive into the hows and whys of designing environments for entertainment. From creating mood with color and light, to exploring different biomes and weather, to crafting architecture and props, he will teach you how to design amazing environments that make your work stand out from the crowd.

To embrace gaming, Apple needs to level up its game porting toolkit

Six Colors by Jason Snell, Dan Moren and friends