Posted by xeophin
Robert Yang kindly asked me to translate the article about my level design considerations for my bachelor's thesis game. I'm slightly afraid that he is going to be disappointed, since this is not so much a theoretical approach to architecture and level design in general, but rather my thoughts and motivations for creating the specific level architecture for my own game.
Some Background
My bachelor project is going to be a serious game aimed at 13 to 15 year old students. It is trying to raise awareness of (homophobic) bullying.
Using a first-person perspective, the player starts out in what seems to be some sort of adventure game, but in the course of the game will be forced to change the character. This does not only change the way s/he sees the world (every character sees the world differently), but also how s/he can communicate with other people – and s/he will have to deal with the behaviour of the character s/he played before, since the player's previous choices are imprinted on this character. Confronted with her/his own behaviour, the player should be able (in the best case) to reflect on her/his way of treating other people.
When starting to design the level, I considered the following points to be the main guiding lines:
Isolation
With the game being a serious game and a bachelor's project, I have neither the time (now) nor the money (in the future, when, hopefully, I'll be able to finish and publish the game) to create a large, open world.
