What are the worst examples of level design you've encountered? Here are some examples that come to mind: - When hazards are indistinguishable from environment (Tombi is terrible with those!) - When it's ambiguous if "below" is a platform or pitfall depth-death (for example Sonic Advance 3) - When ambitious environments totally overshadow invisible walls (Okami slammed you on the nose with... air!) - When there are empty dead ends just to make the level larger (hmm, Metroid II) Though, personally I have nothing against back-tracking if it's got new content (like in several Zelda games, which practically build upon seeing/remembering/revisiting). By the way, I was surprised of not finding any bad level design threads in the search here, any tips?

you might like this thread.

as for bad designing..

* A passage that you can walk down on foot and yet cannot go with a vehicle/mount even though there are no visible reasons. (Zelda : twilight princess)
* A blade that will damage you even if you hit the flat side. (god of war)
* A platform that you can fall right through if you stand a bit too close to the edge (god of war)
* An attack that is not announced that can kill your entire squad in one hit. (overlord 2)

One that always gets me is the misuse of crates, in particular crates in impossible places. How is it possible that a huge crate gets put inside a room when the crate is much too large to fit through any of the doors?

Also air vents that are always just big enough to fit through and that have no logical organization at all are annoying. Seriously, who in their right mind would design an HVAC system with air ducts that go willy-nilly and make no logical sense.

bad level design? squarish undetailed levels(Shinobi and Nightshade for the ps2)

Many of the Sonic the Hedgehog games are guilty of bad level design. Especially the newer ones.

Sonic 3 had the infamous barrel in Carnival Night Act 2. Jumping on the barrel made it slew up and down, and you had to get to a platform below it. You assume that since it moves when you jump on it, that this is how you get past it. Instead, you're supposed to use the up and down directions on the d-pad, something not used for any real purpose anywhere else in the game. Bad. It took me YEARS to figure this out, and you can't beat the game without go past it.

The newer games just have bad level design period. It's way too darn easy to fly off an edge to your doom because Sonic is running too fast to respond to the pits of death that are everywhere. Keep in mind that Sonic is supposed to be very fast, so this means a terrible failure on the level designer's part.

A good level should be discoverable. That is, it should be possible for a very skilled player to navigate a level from beginning to end without having to resort to trial-and-error (dying and reloading) or online guides. That doesn't mean that the player shouldn't die, but rather that his death should be from a lack of skill rather than a lack of knowledge. Secret parts of the level may require trial-and-error, but not an online guide. Forcing the player to consult resources outside of the game is bad design.

Consequently, a bad level is one that is not discoverable. For example, a level that requires a player use a mechanic that he has not been introduced to is bad. Requiring the player die several times to learn how to navigate a level is also bad. I'm thinking Battletoads bike sequences, although it is technically possible to pass those levels on a first try, for all practical purposes its impossible. Other bad mechanics might be insta-gib traps that are not distinguishable from the background, or requiring that a user solve puzzles to progress without giving them any reasonable info on how to approach the puzzle (i.e. "Well I give up, lets try combining everything in my inventory with everything else and see if something works...", or "To get past this point you should have thrown that lever halfway through the level. Have fun getting back there").

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Original post by Dim_Yimma_H - When ambitious environments totally overshadow invisible walls (Okami slammed you on the nose with... air!)

I'm actually going to pick on Okami, because I felt the level design was a weakness of the game.

I felt that the game tried to encourage you to backtrack, but didn't reward you appropriately for doing so. If you were lucky you got an item that was worth a bit of cash. Contrast to earlier Zelda games where you'd often get heart pieces or something of significance for your efforts. I also feel that the newer Zelda games have watered down the rewards for exploring (I kinda feel that the third game was the best in the series).

I also felt the levels were short and too straight-foward. There's a good balance to strike between making levels too complex and too simple, and I felt that Okami aired a bit too much towards simple. Admittedly, though, I only got about halfway through the game, a bit past the "surprising twist" plot point, so the design may have significantly improved later.

So I guess I'll add:
1) Levels that don't adequetely reward the player for completing tasks
2) Levels that are too complex or too simple. You have to keep the player interested without overwhelming them. Probably the hardest part of level design.

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Original post by Moe One that always gets me is the misuse of crates, in particular crates in impossible places. How is it possible that a huge crate gets put inside a room when the crate is much too large to fit through any of the doors? Also air vents that are always just big enough to fit through and that have no logical organization at all are annoying. Seriously, who in their right mind would design an HVAC system with air ducts that go willy-nilly and make no logical sense.

LOL this really makes you mad that the air ducts aren't designed in a functionally efficient way?

I think I would rather have the fun experience than realistic air duct design, and pose that this is potentially an example of GOOD level design since the designers realized the fact that realism does not always equal fun :P

IMO!

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Original post by Dim_Yimma_H - When hazards are indistinguishable from environment (Tombi is terrible with those!)

My pet gripe is a variant on this - buttons that don't look like buttons but instead look like irrlevant level detail (so you ignore them). Or the reverse - level detail that really, really looks like a button you should be able to press (and spend ages trying to) only to eventually realise it doesn't do anything.

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Original post by Atrix256 Quote: Original post by Moe One that always gets me is the misuse of crates, in particular crates in impossible places. How is it possible that a huge crate gets put inside a room when the crate is much too large to fit through any of the doors? Also air vents that are always just big enough to fit through and that have no logical organization at all are annoying. Seriously, who in their right mind would design an HVAC system with air ducts that go willy-nilly and make no logical sense. LOL this really makes you mad that the air ducts aren't designed in a functionally efficient way? I think I would rather have the fun experience than realistic air duct design, and pose that this is potentially an example of GOOD level design since the designers realized the fact that realism does not always equal fun :P IMO!

It just really bothers me when there are perfectly located and perfectly sized man-ducts that go from room to room that make absolutely no sense from an engineering perspective (say for example, an air duct running just from one room to another when there are no other air ducts in a level, and one of the rooms just happens to be locked.