Environment Phases

Here are some collected thoughts on how to create an interesting 'cast' of levels, in the same way that character archetypes allow us to create an interesting cast of characters.

The levels and environments in your game should demonstrate narrative arc and punctuation the same as any other story-telling element.

In general, these ideas probably only apply to games which have a strong sense of place, and especially to non-linear environments (though I could probably argue that many of the environments in interesting linear games exhibit these same archetypes).

Some of the specific games I was thinking of when I came up with this list included the Metroid games, Yoshi's Island, the Final Fantasys, the Deus Exs, Zelda, and the Mario & Luigi games.

graph by Jörg Kanngießer

The Phases

• "Peaceful Hub" -- Somewhere completely tamed, a 'place to come back to'. This is where the good guys hang out.
• "Peaceful Wild Zone" -- A friendly wild region. Like a meadow with deer and bunnies, lots of greenery and waterfalls.
• "Transformed Zone" -- A region that communicates the conflict: Evidence of the peaceful zone, but also corrupted and dangerous.
• "Neutral Hub or Zone" -- A place with no specific antagonists, but an air of barbarism or powerful nature to it.
• "Neutral Wild Zone" -- A dangerous region that is of neutral alignment. Conflict is optional and motivated by 'eat or be eaten'.
• "Hostile Zone" -- The enemy territory. The player is actively opposed and the conflict is thematically motivated.
• "Hostile Hub" -- A nexus of the antagonists to be either assaulted or escaped.
• "Respite Hub" -- A small, usually hidden area within the hostile zones that provides the player with protection and protagonistic support. Often the location of a save point, powerup, or merchant.
• "Distraction Hub" -- An area that explicity breaks the player out of the normal flow of the game. Minigames and optional sidequests live here.
• "Strange Zone" -- Somewhere highly unusual, communicating a deeper truth about the world of the game. Because these are usually non-narrative, they should be transitional areas to pique player curiosity rather than destinations that get expounded on.
• "Hard Path" -- Somewhere the player ends up by choice or by accident that is both unforgiving and forward-momentum only.
• "Beautiful Path" -- A trail of rising positive energy, no conflict, and a strong reward at the end.

Each of these phases may appear any number of times and be of varying size and saturation. The idea is that each one provides a different kind of exploration and environmental learning. As well, a given region in the game could change from one phase to another as the story progresses.

Zones vs. Hubs vs. Paths

Hubs are feature dense areas, such as towns with people and shops in them. They often serve as destinations for plot points and player goals, that is the player is usually travelling 'to' a hub of somesort. Hubs may also include dungeons and puzzle areas, or anywhere that is a dead end.

Zones are mutidimensional areas that the player can traverse in a variety of ways and directions. They have multple entrances and exits, and may even have 'borders' to other zones, which is basically a very large exit, or a number of exits that lead to the same adjacent zone. Players travel 'through' zones, not 'to' zones.

Paths are one-dimensional, they have a single directed flow, and an entrance and exit at each end (though they may branch). They tend to be more highly narrative than a zone, because the player's progression along them is very controlled. Thus they are good for 'gating' mechanic knowledge or conveying specific features of the world. Note that in addition to the paths mentioned above, any zone type could be made into a path as well.