How to build levels around one mechanic

1 The bottom line

Build the level on one mechanic, escalate it in small twists, weave in other ideas, and finish by combining what the player has already mastered. A combination feels like a payoff only when each part was learned alone.

2 Key takeaways

• Give each level one main mechanic as its theme. A level stuffed with every object has no room to introduce or fully explore any of them.
  • In Super Mario Maker 2, the example level is built around the swinging claw, not a mix of spike columns, bumpers, seesaws and Banzai Bills. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:24
  • Seesaw Bridge and Chocolate Island 3 each stretch one spinning or tilting platform idea across the whole stage. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit11:05
• Escalate the mechanic in small steps, each one asking a bit more. Every twist tells the player they know the basics and asks how they cope with this change.
  • Lemmy's Swingback Castle in New Super Mario Bros. U goes from one swinging platform to two with an enemy between, then fire, fireballs, offset patterns, dipping platforms with red coins and a final gauntlet. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:16
• Come back to the mechanic with other content in between. Spreading a few ideas out keeps them fresh and surprising.
  • In Mega Man 11's Impact Man stage, wire platforms appear in rooms 2, 10 and 15, with drills in rooms 5, 11 and 18 between them. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:49
• Keep two mechanics apart for most of the level, then combine them late. The separation makes the combination feel like a reveal.
  • Baobab Bonanza separates bending flowers from rolling spiked nuts, then has a giant spiked nut chase you while you jump from flower to flower. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:11
• Give the finale enough room to pay off the build-up. Reaching every tool and then getting only a few levels feels flat.
  • In Mind Over Magnet, full access to the magnets came with too few levels, so Mark added more puzzles and a more exciting finale. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:21

You know how to deal with this mechanic: but how do you fare when I do this?

Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit

2.1 Choose the one mechanic that carries the level

A level with one clear theme has room to introduce each idea and explore it fully.

• Pick a single item as the theme and leave the rest of the toolbox alone. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:24
  • Choose something like a note block, trampoline, on/off switch, snake block or swinging claw. Other items can still appear, but one mechanic gives a strong foundation.
  • In New Super Mario Bros. U, most levels showcase one idea, such as a platform type, an enemy or a hazard. They repeat it in harder versions before dropping it for something fresh. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:16
• Start from the ability you want, then build the setting around it. Chris McEntee, Moon Studios2:48
  • The Ori team asked what unique move would complement the existing moveset. Burrowing in sand followed, inspired by a digging power-up in Sonic Colors, and the desert came after.
  • Super Mario Odyssey's team had many prototypes and asked what location would make each play idea fun. A slippery-surface idea suits ice or snow. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit9:53
  • Mind Over Magnet gives each world a different magnet: big blocks, then Max, who is thrown around the room, then Maggie and Meg, who switch with polarity. Each gets about four levels to teach its basics. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:11
• Make sure the level actually demands the mechanic. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:00
  • Most Spider-Man missions rarely need fast or precise swinging. The standouts are the Scorpion mission with a poison floor and the Electro fight where you swing around buildings shooting transformers.
  • In Star Fox Zero's on-rail sections everything is in front of you, so players rarely need the second screen. The mother strider boss forces the switch by putting its weak points where the player must look at the Gamepad. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:17

2.2 Find your twists in a test bed

Set a concrete goal, list every variation of the mechanic, then play them to see which are worth keeping.

• Replace "make an interesting puzzle" with something concrete. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:58
  • Mark hyper focused for hours on new mechanics, which began with a clear goal. Level design dragged because its only goal was ambiguous, and adding structure brought the motivation back.
• List every way to make the mechanic harder or more interesting, and build each in a separate test area. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:50
  • The claw can be one claw over a gap, several at different heights, a platform between them, or a floating enemy.
  • Some twists turn out boring and some are far too hard, so only playing them shows which give the best experience.
• Cross your mechanics in a matrix to find combinations. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:55
  • List mechanics along the top and side, remove duplicates, and treat each cell as a pair to explore. Put the pair in an empty room with a few basic pieces and look for interesting consequences.
  • The electromagnet and drill bit cell produced a puzzle idea for Mind Over Magnet.
  • The claw can ride tracks that fork with an on/off switch, or carry trampolines, enemies and bombs, so a bomb can blow through a wall. Asking what a bullet bill does to a claw is how ideas turn up. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:16

2.3 Teach the basic form, then escalate

Start simple and safe, then change one thing at a time until the player is doing something far harder than at the start.

• Open with a simple action, repeat it with a twist, then add a positional challenge. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit11:37
  • In Skyview Temple, one dizzy spin makes an eye dizzy. Then two eyes at once, then three at once, which requires you to stand higher.
  • In Breath of the Wild's Joloo Nah Apparatus, the central block spins. You turn on all the lights, then blast four fans at once, then light six torches while avoiding two streams of water. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit12:47
• Mutate the mechanic after the basic version is learned. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:19
  • Seesaw Bridge moves from see-saws to out-of-sync 360 spinners, then to a spinner too long to cross mid-rotation.
  • Add interceptor enemies that appear between platforms, so timing matters as well as jumping. Enemies placed on the platforms add a further wrinkle. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:57
  • In Chocolate Island 3, Fuzzies replace the central Koopa and force Mario to duck.
• Ramp difficulty by lengthening the stretches between safe zones. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:29
  • The player spends longer needing to react with no place to relax. By the end you may not see the next safe spot and just have to go for it.
  • Use the four or five best twists in a gentle curve, and save obstacles that extend past the camera for the end. The player cannot see what is coming, so they must react. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:20
• Judge how much each added layer costs the player. Chris McEntee, Moon Studios9:09
  • Aiming and burrowing through a sand ball is far harder than standing on sand and pressing the burrow button.

2.4 Weave in other ideas and change the pace

Between escalations, add a second or third idea, a hint of what is coming, and a place to rest.

• Do not run all the escalations of one element in a row. Chris McEntee, Moon Studios9:09
  • Mix them with other elements for variety.
  • A Tropical Freeze stage may introduce two or three mechanics and weave them together at different points. Horn-top Hop combines falling leaves with rhythmic horn blasts. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:32
  • Rickety Rafters stacks its switches: pull a switch to reveal a button, then throw fruit at it. Each mechanic is still explored as thoroughly as a typical Mario one. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:32
  • Mega Man levels use about seven room shapes. The same enemy plays differently depending on the geometry, and Pick Man is far harder to dodge when he is above you. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:38
• Tie a crowd of mechanics together with one theme. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:35
  • Scorch 'n' Torch has around six mechanics, all drawn from a forest fire: water berries, burning trees, burning ropes, falling statues, hot coals and falling flames.
  • Thinking about a fruit processing plant, not individual mechanics, gave Retro cleavers, drills through grapefruit, blenders that spit out platforms and swinging smashing arms. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:47
• Seed hints of the second half's ideas into the first half. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:34
  • It makes the later half feel cohesive with the level and avoids surprises. In the example level, the on/off block appears early so players know what to do when it returns at the end.
• Put rest and small rewards between challenges. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:40
  • Downtime gives a modulated pace of tension and release, which is more fun than non-stop action.
  • A mini-boss stops forward movement, and an empty-ish room after it works as a checkpoint. In Torch Man's stage, a barbecue chicken mini-boss is followed by an enemy-free checkpoint. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:29
  • In Seesaw Bridge, Koopa and Wiggler placement makes almost every player throw a shell to the right, taking out three Wigglers. It is there to make you smile. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:40

2.5 End with a combination the player has earned

Late in the level, merge and replay what the player has learned so the finale tests mastery.

• Combine two mechanics only after the player has mastered each one alone. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:23
  • Show the drills and the moving platforms separately, then merge them near the end of the stage. A combination that would be very hard cold becomes achievable.
  • Impact Man's room 18 has you dodging drills while riding the wire platforms.
• Make a capstone room that uses every facet of the mechanic. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:07
  • At the top of the Ginso Tree, one room demands platforming, combat and puzzle solving together.
  • Another room has you carry a projectile through cornered portals with Bash, avoiding enemies and the shot itself.
• Replay the earlier challenges once the new ability is unlocked. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:48
  • After Bash, the Ginso Tree repeats the projectile platforming, the redirect puzzle, the slugs, the key section and a combat arena. The player has done each without Bash, so they feel how much it changes.
  • Things once avoided, like projectiles and enemies, become tools. Bash fires projectiles into trees and turns slug barf bombs into launch points.
• Echo earlier sections later in harder form, like repeated musical sections. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:28
  • The player recognizes the structure and feels the escalation, so the level feels designed, not random.
  • In Block Man's stage, rooms 6 to 9 (mini-boss, breather, escape, vertical climb) return as rooms 11 to 14, with the mini-boss on a conveyor belt and a harder escape.

2.6 Shape the ending and revise

Size the finale to the build-up, retire the mechanic before it goes stale, and rebuild after your first draft.

• Keep the last stretch short and exciting. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:45
  • Mind Over Magnet's World 4 had bloated to about 20 levels against roughly 15 in the others, so Mark split the game into five worlds.
  • Players with every magnet do not want another long world of hard puzzles. A surprisingly short world 5 ends the game on a high.
  • Mark also added a small transitional stage between worlds, because moving from one world to the next felt anticlimactic. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:11
• Remove the mechanic before the player gets bored of it. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:24
  • In Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause, you swap between a clean past and a ruined present. At the level's end the time machine is torn off and the mechanic is gone for the rest of the game.
• If a new high point appears, rebuild the level to build toward it. Mark Brown and Evan Hill, Game Maker's Toolkit11:04
  • The Last of Us Part II museum was going to peak at the dinosaur. The space capsule sequence replaced it as the peak, and the dinosaur became part of the build.
  • With that extreme high note in place, the team asked how to counteract it. They added a dark, spooky third act. Mark Brown and Evan Hill, Game Maker's Toolkit11:28
• Rebuild the level from scratch after the discovery draft. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit15:29
  • A first draft leaves fluff and garbage while you work out what the level is. Starting again with what you learned gives a more elegant, coherent version.

2.7 Where designers disagree

One mechanic per level is a strong default, but it has limits, and the formula should not become a rule.

• One idea per level can run dry. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:22
  • There are only so many ways to spin each idea, so levels end up short and predictable. You eventually run out of one-shot ideas and start repeating hazards.
  • The same hazards recur across all four New Super Mario Bros. games.
  • Tropical Freeze answers by putting two or three mechanics in a level, and by designing from a theme, not a mechanic. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:47
• Escalating one idea competes with constant novelty. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:02
  • Titanfall 2 introduces a new idea almost every level, such as a sentry-hacking tool, a factory conveyer belt of prefab houses and spaceship wall-running. Mark calls this steady originality the first half of good pacing.
• Ending on a test of the item is not everyone's taste. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:49
  • Ocarina of Time bosses are fought with the dungeon's item, so the boss caps the dungeon as a final exam. Mark likes this, but some commenters disagree and he will keep testing the idea.
• Treat any escalation formula as a guideline. Mark Brown, with Jakob Mikkelsen and Eskil Mohl, Game Maker's Toolkit17:29
  • Strict rules make every level the same. IO varies verticality, crowd density and size, and thinks of levels as a chain so each contrasts with its neighbours.