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NLD Update: Week 46

Another week has flown by.  Now's your chance to check out the Next Level Design content you may have missed.

*Note: Clicking an image below will bring you directly to the content.

Articles:

Reaching Perfection is a series of short articles on Level Design, written by Ray Benefield over the course of several years, covering everything from Threat Zones, to Peer Review, to Cohesion. Chapter 1 digs into the subject of First Impressions.

Part 2 of this series on Playtesting from Pascal Luban has him diving deeper into the subject. The final part of the series gets into the logistics and organization of them, along with how to collect and communicate the resulting feedback.

Super Mario Bros is widely recognized for its levels, masterfully designed to teach players about the rules of the universe they've jumped into. In today's featured article, Abhishek Iyer effectively uses level 1-1 to demonstrate how this is done.

Choice Fields - "a collection of spectrums, all of which describe a single game mechanic." Mike Stout lays out multiple types of choice fields, providing examples of each, along with thoughts on how to implement them into your game.

Backtracking in a game is boring - there's just no denying this fact. In this video, Extra Credits addresses this issue, pointing out pitfalls to avoid, and providing numerous methods of designing levels so that backtracking isn't a necessity.

Forums:

@S0UL FLAME dropped a couple of teaser images in WAYWO

We've shared Module 2 of The Architectural Imagination. Much to be learned from this series for level designers, so we strongly recommend checking it out.

Take a look at the Twitter Thread to see some of the level design and game design content share in the last week

Contests:

Our November Challenge is where card lovers and game designers collide. Your mission is to design a card game. Read more in the announcement article.

New Members:

Hello, Hello, and welcome to our newest Next Level Design members:

@Brad

@tigerssj

@Will Le Beouf

For those of you who are reading this that haven't yet joined Next Level Design, now is a great time to become a member.  Follow the link below to get signed up.  

We've also recently updated the Next Level Design Discord Server. It's now more fully integrated with the website, and when new content is shared on the website, you'll have visibility to it from Discord.  It's definitely worth joining if you spend any time on Discord.

Check out the links below to join the website and Discord.  

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