Multiple levels for casual games

Hi everyone! I want to suggest my approach to multiple level creation for casual games. It works fine if your levels are not very complicated. I am creating this thread because after quick searching in Google I haven't find this approach. It is simple: save each level as a prefab. You won't have to save each level as a scene. Each time you need to load new level, you should destroy the old one (if it exists) and instantiate a new one. So what do you think of it? Maybe you know some other ways to organize level system (except the obvious saving as different scenes)?

 

I think it depends on your game's design. Creating multiple prefabs or multiple scenes for different levels can be problematic when you have common functionality across levels you need to change.

In general I'm a fan of having a single scene with all common functionality (things like the UI and certain core game systems), and then either instantiating level specific prefabs or additive loading level scenes for the other stuff unique to that level.

 

I like the clarity of using separate scenes for different levels (or in my case, dungeon locations).

Sure, it means effectively duplicating some identical functional Gameobjects from prefabs, but it flows really nicely when mixed in with clear serialization. Plus it's so much easier I find to 'set the scene up' when it's a fresh, new scene - as opposed to one scene + loading assets/instantiating/resetting all sorts of things. I personally find that all a bit messy in comparison (although I'm maybe not looking at it quite as perfectly as I could).

To be honest, I've often been a bit surprised there isn't more documentation/guidance on this area. I know some say it depends on the circumstances which way is best, but it still feels like a stab in the dark sometimes.

There's a lot of advice on the individual detailed stuff, but there seems to be a bit of a vacuum from Unity when it comes to how best to approach the broader aspects of multi-scene projects in general. I've looked through all the tutorials, and they're all about functional things.