Level Design

A blank sheet of paper on an oak desk with a simple empty pencil rectangle, a wooden pencil beside it, and a small clay pebble in window light.

Draw a single room by hand, with an entrance, a sightline, one obstacle, and one goal, before you open any engine.

This is a different slice from our earlier level design posts: those cover generating layout options with AI, building rooms as weighted data, and filling in a whole design document, while this page has you draw exactly one room on paper and test it with a pencil.

You will not design a level, a dungeon, or a world. You will design one room. When you finish, you will have a sheet you can hand to someone, ask them to “play” with their finger, and later rebuild with boxes in whatever engine you use.

What you need

  • One sheet of graph paper, or plain paper and a ruler.
  • A pencil, an eraser, and one colored pen or highlighter.
  • A coin or small token to stand in for the player.
  • About thirty minutes.

Step 1: Pick a scale and stick to it

Decide what one grid square means. A simple choice is one square equals one step of your player character. If you do not know your character’s size yet, that is fine. Pick one square per step and write that rule in the corner of the page as a small symbol, like a single footprint inside one square.

Draw the outer walls of the room. Keep it modest. A rectangle around twelve by sixteen squares is plenty for a first pass. If you find yourself drawing a second room, stop and erase it. This exercise is one room.

Step 2: Mark where the player enters

Choose one spot on the wall and draw a gap for the entrance. Put an arrow pointing into the room.

Now place your coin just inside the entrance. This is the player’s first moment. Everything you draw next should be judged from this coin’s point of view.

Ask yourself:

  • Is the entrance on a short wall or a long wall?
  • Does the player come in facing the length of the room or across it?
  • Is there anything right in front of them, or open floor?

Entering along the long axis lets the player see deep into the room. Entering from the side hides more of it. Neither is wrong. Pick one on purpose.

Step 3: Draw what they can see

From the coin, use your colored pen to draw light, straight lines out to the edges of what the player could see on the first step in. Stop each line when it hits a wall, a pillar, or any solid shape.

Shade the area those lines cover. That shaded shape is the first view of the room.

Look at the shaded area and answer three questions in the margin, using short marks or a single word each:

  1. Can the player see the goal from the entrance?
  2. Can the player see the obstacle from the entrance?
  3. Is there a part of the room they cannot see at all?

If the goal is visible right away, the room becomes about getting there. If the goal is hidden, the room becomes about looking around. Decide which one you want, and move walls or add a pillar until the drawing matches that intent.

Step 4: Add one obstacle

Choose one thing that stands between the player and the goal. Only one.

Some blank options to pick from:

  • A gap in the floor the player must go around or jump.
  • A locked door.
  • A raised ledge.
  • A low wall that blocks the direct path.
  • A patrolling hazard, drawn as a dashed loop with an arrow.

Draw it with a clear, simple shape. Make it larger than you think it should be. On paper, obstacles tend to look smaller than they will feel in a game.

If you want a starting point, use the classic door-and-key exercise. This is a blank exercise, not a design from any real game:

  • Draw a door on the far wall, marked with a small padlock shape.
  • Draw a key icon somewhere the player cannot see from the entrance.
  • Now the obstacle is the locked door, and the room asks the player to explore before they leave.

Step 5: Place one goal

The goal is the reason the player crosses the room. It could be an exit, an item, a switch, or a spot to stand on. Draw it with a star, a circle, or any symbol you will recognize later.

Then draw the shortest path from the coin to the goal as a dotted line. Draw it the way a player would really walk, around the obstacle, not through it.

Count the squares along that path and write the number in the margin. This is your rough room length in steps. It will help you later when you check whether the room feels too long or too cramped.

Step 6: Play it with your finger

Put the coin back at the entrance. Slide it along the floor slowly, one square at a time, and talk out loud about what the player sees and wants.

Watch for these moments:

  • A spot where you would not know which way to go.
  • A stretch of floor where nothing changes.
  • A place where the obstacle surprises you before you could see it.
  • A corner that leads nowhere and offers nothing.

Mark each moment with a small circle on the drawing. Do not fix anything yet. Finish the walk first.

Step 7: Hand it to someone else

Give the sheet and the coin to a friend. Do not explain the room. Ask them to slide the coin to wherever they think they should go.

Stay quiet while they do it. Note where they hesitate, where they go the wrong way, and whether they find the goal. Use a different mark, like a small triangle, for their stops.

If you are working alone, put the sheet away for a day and walk it again with fresh eyes. It is not as good as another person, but it still catches problems.

Step 8: Make one change

Look at all the circles and triangles. Pick the single biggest problem and fix only that one.

Common fixes:

  • Move the goal into the first view if players never found it.
  • Add a pillar or wall to block the view if the room felt solved at a glance.
  • Shorten a long empty stretch by pulling a wall in.
  • Move the obstacle so the player sees it before they reach it.

Redraw the room on a fresh sheet with the change. Keep the old sheet. Comparing the two later shows you what you learned.

Step 9: Write the room in plain terms

Under the final drawing, write four short lines in your own words:

  • Enter: where and facing which way.
  • See: what is visible on the first step.
  • Obstacle: the one thing in the way.
  • Goal: what the player is crossing the room to reach.

If you cannot fill one of these lines in a few words, the room is not clear yet. Go back to that step.

Step 10: Then open the engine

Now, and only now, rebuild the room with plain boxes in your engine. Use your grid scale to set sizes. Put a camera at the entrance at the player’s eye height and compare the view to your shaded sightline drawing.

They will not match perfectly. That gap is useful. Note where the engine view shows more or less than the paper did, and adjust the paper version too, so the two stay in step.

Stop here

You have one room with a clear entrance, a known first view, one obstacle, and one goal, tested by at least one finger that was not yours. That is enough for today.

Keep the sheets in a folder. When you draw the next room, start with this one’s door and decide where it leads. One room at a time, on paper first, keeps each space honest.