Description
Design, build, and iterate game levels and play spaces. Craft layouts, encounters, pacing, and environmental storytelling that showcase core mechanics. Create and maintain level design documentation and blockouts. Collaborate with cross-functional teams and production to deliver levels that meet vision, quality, and performance goals.
- • Research competitive titles and media to inform level layout, pacing, and encounter ideas.
- • Provide level test cases and acceptance criteria to QA.
- • Stay current on level design tools, workflows, player trends, and best practices.
- • Create playtest plans for internal and external evaluation of levels and maps.
- • Give feedback on mechanics integration, readability, and flow across levels.
- • Balance difficulty, pacing, checkpoints, and rewards to meet design goals.
- • Define in-level objectives, signage, and environmental storytelling with narrative and UX.
- • Gather, analyze, and integrate playtest and stakeholder feedback into level iterations.
- • Communicate scope, risks, and performance considerations of levels to production.
- • Produce 2D layout maps and 3D graybox blockouts of levels.
- • Present level concepts, encounter beats, and progression to designers, artists, and engineers.
- • Iterate blockouts in engine using metrics for traversal, combat spaces, and line of sight.
- • Oversee level playtests to ensure intended experience and design vision.
- • Facilitate cross-team discussions on level flow, spawn logic, and technical constraints.
- • Design missions, puzzles, combat encounters, and exploration beats within levels.
- • Maintain level design documentation, including layouts, metrics, callouts, and encounter scripts.
- • Place pickups, spawn points, navmesh, lighting cues, audio triggers, and interactive elements with relevant teams.
- • Build prototype spaces to validate mechanics, navigation, and narrative delivery.
- • Plan and track level production schedules, iteration goals, and dependencies with producers.
- • Partner with online and systems teams to define requirements for multiplayer maps and live content.
- • Run regular level reviews and share notes, action items, and follow-ups.
- • Collaborate with environment art, lighting, VFX, and audio to achieve final quality without sacrificing gameplay.
- • Document levels with annotated maps, flowcharts, heatmaps, and screenshots for cross-team alignment.
- • Optimize levels for performance, memory, streaming, and accessibility; fix level design bugs.
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Arts, Entertainment, & Design
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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This site includes information from O*NET by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. Career Clutch has modified some of this information for student readability. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Last reviewed: Jan 2026
