Top products from r/leveldesign

We found 16 product mentions on r/leveldesign. We ranked the 13 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/leveldesign:

u/MinMacAttack · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

Buying him computer hardware might be nice, but there's a lot of other ways to give something related to games and game design.

There's always a great big pound of dice. It's full of dice of assorted numbers of sides, and a game designer remotely interested in tabletop (which should be all of them) can use a healthy supply of dice for making tabletop games. There's always the fun of just rolling dice giant handfuls of dice. I'm out right now but I'll add the link when I get back home. Here's the link: Pound of dice

I'd also look into games he hasn't tried. BoardGameGeek has a lot of board games listed and reviewed that you could get, and of course there's always steam. For board games I'd recommend:

  • Red Dragon Inn, a fun party game for 2-4 that's best with 3+. You play as a bunch of adventurers after big dungeon raid and now they're spending gold at their local tavern and gambling. Can support more players with its sequels.
  • Monopoly Deal: A card game version of Monopoly, without the bullshit. Unlike it's big board game cousin, it actually plays out fairly quickly while still being focused on building monopolies to win the game. As a game player perspective it's a fun game, but also from a game designer's perspective it's interesting to see how this game re-imagines the original board game while being true to the source material and streamlining many of its game mechanics.
  • Carcassonne: A well known classic game that works well with 2-5 players where players build up a world of castles, farmland, and roads.
  • Bang the Dice Game: A game where the sheriff and his deputies face off against the outlaws but nobody knows who to shoot. At the start of the game players are given their roles in the conflict but only the sheriff shows who they are. The rest of the game involves social deduction to try to figure who everyone is supposed to be shooting, and trying to read past bluffs. The game works great for 5-8 players, and can work for 3-8.

    There's also a lot of books on game design you can get him. You may have to check to see if he owns some of these already, but I've found them to be great reads that I can recommend to anyone interested in game design.

  • Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: This is a book that tells "The Triumphant, turbulent stories behind how video games are made" and talks about the stories behind 10 different games from across the video game industry and what went on during development. I just bought this one and haven't gotten to chance to read it yet, but I'm excited to start it soon.
  • The Art of Game Design: This is one of the most well known books on game design that discusses a lot of what makes games work. I recommend it to anyone interested in game design.
  • Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games: This book talks about everything that goes into how to design a game and some key differences on how some types of games work. It's more on the beginner/intermediate side, so some of it might be familiar to him.
u/MrHCow · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

making maps in source landed me my first level design job :) you can definitely learn much by creating your own level for a popular game. but I'm not sure if learning unreal engine would be more valuable today.

I can also recommend this book here https://www.amazon.com/Level-Design-Games-Compelling-Experiences/dp/0321375971/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1537244630&sr=8-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=level+design&dpPl=1&dpID=51%2B%2BTIueTAL&ref=plSrch

also a bit old but still .. oh man I think I'm old lol

u/mjens · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

I'm already 13 years in AAA games industry. I went through the answers and I agree that Level Design books are not really great if you want to create something more than a tiny indie game. If you want to learn from the "sources", I highly recommend you:

- Environmental Psychology - You can skip parts about noise but perception and decision making in space is a crucial knowledge in Level Design.

- Architecture: Form, Space and Order - This book tells you all about how space is made and how it affects people.

This is a great start. When you'll be done with these books, come back for more ;)

u/biggerthancheeseus · 1 pointr/leveldesign

I'd recommend this massively:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Design-Vocabulary-Foundational-Principles-x/dp/0321886925/

It's really clear and helps you understand what you are using the levels for.

I'm about half way through this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Level-Design-Concept-Theory-Practice/dp/1568813384/

It's good so far.

u/ucankabak · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

I can certainly recommend you

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses


by Jesse Schell. Also, this book has a companion app in Play Store and App Store

u/gludion · 2 pointsr/leveldesign

(EDIT: I just discovered "An Architectural Approach to Level Design" by Christopher W. Totten mentionned below and it looks great)

Hello, I don't know any book on "general" level principles (which exist, as any experimented LD can confirm).

Most books focus on specific genres (mostly 3D games) and tiny details about those genres (3d models, textures, sounds, etc.). I don't know any book encompassing various common genres (including 2d platformers, puzzle games) and dealing with common issues: how to introduce new objects, how to teach the player how to use them, how to balance difficulty progression, how to add multiples layer of goals and complexity, approaches to procedural LD...

The closest I've found is this blog: http://critical-gaming.squarespace.com/gamedesign101/

There are many other interesting articles on gamasutra.

This book by Tanya Short is specifically about procedural content generation.