Level up

Level up

Making things

From playing to building.

Mario Paint turned a generation of kids into artists and composers. ROM hackers turned old games into new ones. Plenty of today's game designers started by wondering how the level they loved was built.

Play is where people find out what they want to make. The step from playing to making is smaller than it looks.

Train it on purpose

  1. Sketch a level for a game you love, on paper. Enemies, secrets, the lot.
  2. Change one rule of a game and play it with a mate. House rules count.
  3. Try a simple game maker for one weekend. Finish something tiny.

Off the couch

Making things is how people find work they love, and it is magnetic. Someone who builds, draws, cooks or writes has something to show and something to talk about. 'I made this' beats 'I watched this' every time.

Sources

  1. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality.

Games that train it

ClayFighter coverClayFighter
Artists moulded real clay figures and photographed each pose; the Blob alone needed about 70 models. Someone made all of that by hand.Earthworm Jim coverEarthworm Jim
Doug TenNapel brought Shiny a sketch of a worm, and a team used to making licensed games built one that takes the mickey out of platformers, right down to Princess What's-Her-Name.Excitebike coverExcitebike
Design Mode is a track editor with 19 kinds of obstacle. On a Western cartridge your tracks vanish when you switch off, so build, ride and fix in one sitting.Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball coverKen Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
Everyone but Griffey is invented, and a name editor lets you type in new names. The Red Sox are already Norm and Sam from Cheers.Mach Rider coverMach Rider
Design Mode lets you build your own sector and ride it in any mode.Mario Paint coverMario Paint
A drawing board, Animation Land and a music composer where Mario's head is a piano and a dog barks a note. People still write full covers inside those limits.Populous coverPopulous
Followers build only where you give them flat ground, and bigger flats mean bigger houses. Every town on the map is one you shaped.Solomon's Key 2 coverSolomon's Key 2
There's a stage editor for making your own levels. Building a puzzle teaches you more than solving one.Star Ocean coverStar Ocean
Skills like cooking and item creation can make better gear than any shop sells. Points from fights go into building, not just levelling.Super Bomberman 5 coverSuper Bomberman 5
Create-a-character gives you a budget of points to spend on power-ups. Every mate shows up with their own build.Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 coverUltimate Mortal Kombat 3
A code unlocks three cheat menus that let you bend the rules almost any way you like. That's game design with training wheels.Wrecking Crew coverWrecking Crew
There's an editor for building four levels of your own, and designing one a mate can't solve is half the point.