Level Design Critique

We want you to be thinking about your level design as soon a possible. While you do have a level design document coming up later in the course, we want you to use what you learned from the level design lecture to start brainstorming immediately.

This day is not a formal presentation like a release. You will not be standing up and presenting to the entire class. Instead, we are going to break the course up into nine groups and you will be coming up with level design ideas and getting feedback. You will not be graded on this critique, but we will be taking attendance. The goal of the class is simply to give you more feedback earlier.

Preparing for the Critique

As we said, this is not a formal presentation. You do not need to come with slides or any sort of presentation. However, we do want you to come with some level design ideas ahead of time. These could be on pieces of paper, or simply stored in your head. But we want you to have something to present.

We do not want you to come up with full-featured levels. Right now, we just want you to come up with several design patterns for your challenges. Review the level design lecture if you cannot remember what these are. We would like at least one of those patterns to be a composite pattern on top of a basic pattern.

You will be given no more than 5 minutes to make your presentation; we want to spend most of the time on question-and-answer session afterwards. You may not use the projector or a computer. You may draw on the blackboard if you wish, as this can simulate a “back of a napkin” sketch. Otherwise, your presentation is entirely oral.

Running the Critique

When the class starts, we will group everyone into three groups of three teams. In these groupings, each team will take a turn presenting their design patterns to the others.
You can use the projector, white board, or even just a piece of paper. The other groups will critique these design patterns and give suggestions on how to improve them.