Resources on Level Design

So I'm nailing down the last aspects of my game's engines and mechanics and I've blatelently used the asset store and fivver to nail down graphics, but I have one challenge as a single man dev team that I can't seem to overcome: I'm terrible at level design. I have stuff placed generally where it should be, but everything clearly comes across as functional and prototyped instead of looking nice and atmospheric. It's always been my greatest weakness and I'd like to overcome it. Anyone know any good resources for learning this aspect of the game designer's art? Any book/tutorials out there I should know about?

 

https://worldofleveldesign.com/tutorials.php

Like, I can't honestly recommend World of Level Design enough. Everything I didn't learn from my modding days, I learned from there.

 

If it's not progressing through the level, it's not level design but level building, you should look for artbooks, notably landscape and architecture, then for game specific look for environmental storytelling, and look at gamasutra (from google, their search engine sucks).

 

Personally I like Extra Credits or Mike Brown. Now not all of their videos would be considered level design so you'll have to go looking at the list of videos for the ones that pertain to what you want to know. And maybe look up some game theory (not the YouTube channel, the area of math). Here's an alternate link to game theory on Wikipedia. Same stuff just in a different format. Game theory is quite broad so narrow it down to the type of game.

 

I find those video only useful for people who have a minimum of introduction, they are very high level. They never get into the nitty gritty of the process.

 

A reliable source nonetheless.

 

Don't you play games?

Just pay attention while you play. Pretty common and identifiable ways most things are done across the genres. Read a book/ watch a video to get some terminology which may help you boil things down to a few focus words, but you can't turn this into paint by the numbers. You design the level to communicate something to the player. What do you want to communicate? Each stage should have an answer to that question.

 

I agree with neoshaman - search up "gamasutra level design" for lots of free, practical articles from experienced level designers who work in the trenches. Also, cheat. Use Google Image Search to find movie stills, photos, and other art that you can borrow camera angles and lighting setups from.