Effective level design is all about building worlds that can acutely tell a narrative, every element within the world should be placed and selected to contribute to the overall feel, flow and theming of the story being told.

If we are going for a realistic world for example we need to understand the balances between visual fidelity and optimisation, in the real world objects get dents, scratches and age these all tell their own story as each object should feel as if it a) belongs and b) is there for a reason and has its own potential backstory.

If we are making a game we need to consider what objects the player can interact with, where will they be able to go and what will they be able to see and this will also impact the flow, pacing and agency the player may experience.

There are tricks to direct auidences attention from the placement and intensity of lights through to building natural pathways that contextually tell audiences where to go and where to look. We can direct via these visual and auditory cues.

Nightingale Game Environment

What ultimately will break immersion will be where objects or details don’t follow the rules we expect them to from gravity weight through to scale and material properties. An example is a riverbed where flowing water would naturally start to erode the landscape and rocky surfaces nearby and wet the surface materials, if this does not happen and the rocks are not wet despite being submerged the illusion can be broken. This is all of cause unless the level you are designing is intended to be abstract or surreal.