Level Design Deconstruct: Need For Speed: Heat
Need For Speed is a very popular racing IP of its Game Design and Level Design alike in the games industry.
The developers provide an excellent level of detail in the level design itself. For example, each road or path leads the player clearly and with consistent visuals to navigate an open world environment at its core game experience.
Defining clear goals for the player that is easy to read or understand, is a main practice to provide goal clarity. For example, in the image above, the designers use Arrows to give sense of direction that is visually appealing and clear to the player how to proceed forward without getting lost.
Points of Interest’s (POI’s) help guide the player to interesting objectives and setting around the world’s environment.
An interesting gameplay factor of level design is the use of gameplay objects that provides both boundary and dynamic functionality to create a risk vs. reward tactic.
Having variety of ways to navigate the same possible space is also meaningful as a player.
One of the level design decisions I like about in Need for Speed Heat is the construction of the road environment's width’s and pathway’s. And the developers did a good job on defining the bounds for how wide the drivable area will be, allowing more room for additional vehicles than not enough.
Lastly, the use of Diegetic UI is great as a player to understand, where to go, where they currently are, and allowing players to make a choice at the same time.
