Flat levels are forgettable. Players move through them once, glance left and right, and never look back — literally, because there’s no reason to look up or down either. If your blockouts feel like corridors with furniture, the problem usually isn’t your geometry budget or your art direction. It’s that you’re designing in two dimensions and hoping the third takes care of itself.
⚡ Quick Summary
- Verticality in level design is about meaningful height differences that change combat, traversal, and player choices — not just tall geometry.
- Well-designed vertical spaces support 360° combat, alternate routes, player-driven problem solving, and long-range foreshadowing through landmarks.
- Chunk your spaces into 3–5 clear floor planes so players can read the arena at a glance and maintain mental maps under pressure.
- Use elevation to create real trade-offs: high ground for information and angles, low ground for cover, resources, or flanking options.
- In multiplayer, verticality must be balanced and readable at sprint speed, with counter-routes to every power position.
- Test vertical levels specifically for navigation, sightlines, and player flow — not just whether the layout looks cool from the editor camera.
Verticality in level design is the deliberate use of height — climbs, drops, stacked floors, ledges, and layered routes — to change how players move, fight, think, and feel. It is not decoration. It is not “add a tower because towers look cool.” Done well, verticality is a load-bearing gameplay tool that does at least twelve distinct jobs, from forcing 360° combat decisions to telling your story through elevation alone.
In this guide, you’ll learn what verticality actually is (and what it isn’t), the four core functions that do the heaviest gameplay lifting, eight supporting functions that separate good levels from great ones, and a practical workflow for building vertical spaces that playtest well the first time. Every function comes with a named game example you can study tonight.
What Is Verticality in Level Design?
🤖 Technical Definition:
In game and level design, verticality in level design is the deliberate use of the z-axis — stacked floors, platforms, ledges, climbs, drops, and sightlines — so that core gameplay systems (combat, traversal, stealth, puzzle-solving) operate across multiple elevations. A level only becomes truly vertical when height differences reshape player decisions, information, and risk, creating distinct floor planes with specific tactical roles rather than decorative height.
Verticality is vertical flow: how it feels to move upwards and downwards through a space. That’s the definition used by The Level Design Book’s chapter on verticality, and it’s the right one, because it centers the player’s experience of height rather than the designer’s geometry.
Notice what that definition excludes. A skybox mountain isn’t verticality. A ceiling isn’t verticality. Even a staircase isn’t verticality if it connects two spaces that play identically. Verticality only exists when a height change changes the gameplay — your options, your risks, your information, or your emotions.
Floor planes: the unit of vertical design
When planning verticality, chunk your level into floor planes — discrete, readable elevations where gameplay happens — and merge minor height changes into a single floor. A 30-centimeter curb and a 3-meter platform are not the same thing, and treating them as equals is how levels become unreadable.
Floor planes matter because players build mental maps in layers. If your level has three clear planes, players can hold the whole space in their heads. If it has nine micro-elevations blending into each other, they can’t — and they’ll describe your level as “confusing” without ever knowing why.
Height changes embody progression
Ascending usually reads as progress, effort, and reward. Descending reads as risk, descent into danger, or — when subverted — a plunge into secret treasure. These associations are ancient and near-universal, which means you get them for free, but you also have to respect them.
When you push against gravity and ask the player to climb, you have to work harder to justify it. Stairs, ramps, ladders, mantles, and jump pads all facilitate upward flow, but each one costs space, time, and player patience. Budget for that.
A working checklist
Before you call any space “vertical,” ask three questions:
- Can the player move between at least two meaningfully different elevations?
- Does the height difference change a decision — combat, route, or information?
- Can the player read the vertical structure at a glance, without a tutorial pop-up?
If any answer is no, you have height, not verticality. The rest of this guide is about fixing that.
Why Verticality in Level Design Matters: The Four Core Functions
Ask a junior designer what verticality does and you’ll usually get “it makes levels more interesting.” Interesting how? For whom? At what cost? Vague answers produce vague levels, so let’s get specific. These are the four functions that justify verticality’s existence — the ones that do real, measurable gameplay work in some of the best-designed games ever shipped.
Function 1: Strategic Combat — Doom Eternal’s 360° Pressure
In Doom Eternal, vertical layers force you to fight in 360 degrees. Enemies attack from above and below, demanding constant prioritization and movement. Standing still isn’t just suboptimal — it’s death.
This works because elevation multiplies the angles of threat without multiplying enemy count. A flat arena with eight demons gives you one firing line to manage. A three-layer arena with the same eight demons gives you threats on different planes, different projectile arcs, and different escape routes. Your brain tracks more, so the fight feels denser and faster — even though the encounter budget stayed flat.
The design lesson: vertical combat is about information and prioritization, not difficulty spikes. Each floor plane should offer a distinct tactical identity. High ground gives sightlines and damage angles but exposes you. Low ground gives cover and resources but surrenders initiative. Mid-ground is the rotation layer where you reposition — and where the player’s skill at reading the space gets tested.
Academic research backs this up. A Guildhall thesis on encouraging player use of verticality found that in combat-focused level design, verticality contributes to player flow by organizing space into layered zones — the layers themselves are what support strategic decision-making.
If your arena’s verticality doesn’t change what the player prioritizes, it’s set dressing with extra polygons.
Function 2: Meaningful Traversal — Dishonored’s Puzzle-Box Routes
In Dishonored, rooftops and ledges aren’t set dressing — they’re alternate paths. Every level becomes a puzzle box rather than a corridor, because the vertical dimension is always an open question: what if I go over instead of through?
Meaningful traversal has two ingredients. First, the vertical route must be discoverable — visible enough that an attentive player thinks to try it. Second, it must be valuable — safer, faster, richer in loot, or better positioned than the ground route. A rooftop path that’s slower, emptier, and more dangerous than the street below isn’t a choice; it’s a trap for curious players.
Dishonored nails both. Blink, its short-range teleport, makes vertical routes legible (you can always see where a blink could land) and mechanically satisfying (reaching a ledge feels earned), enhancing the verticality in a level. The rooftops above Dunwall’s streets let you bypass entire patrols — but they also host their own guards, tallboys, and vantage points, so elevation is a different risk profile, not a cheat code.
The broader principle: traversal verticality converts level geometry into player expression. Two players can cross the same district without sharing a single footstep. That’s replayability you didn’t have to script.
For your own levels, audit every ground-level path and ask: is there a vertical alternative, and does it trade something real? If every building has an invisible wall at the second floor, you’ve told your players that looking up is pointless — and they’ll stop doing it.
Function 3: Player-Driven Problem-Solving — Breath of the Wild’s Freedom of Approach
In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, climbing and gliding let you approach any space your own way. Height isn’t a route the designer built for you — it’s a resource you spend, manage, and exploit. Elevation gives the player freedom, and freedom is the game’s entire thesis.
The mechanic triad is elegant. Climbing converts stamina into height. Height converts into glide distance. Glide distance converts into positional advantage over camps, shrines, and terrain. Every hill in Hyrule is therefore a decision: is the view, the glide angle, or the tactical position worth the climb?
This is verticality as problem-solving because the game never prescribes the answer. A Bokoblin camp in a valley can be approached from the front, bombed from the cliff above, or glided past entirely. The vertical structure of the space is the puzzle, and the player’s solution is authored by the player.
You don’t need a climbing system to use this function when designing levels. You need three things: an approachable problem, more than one elevation from which to approach it, and different consequences per elevation. Stealth games, immersive sims, and open-world RPGs live on this triad.
The failure mode is fake freedom — three vertical routes that funnel into the same trigger volume. Players notice. Once they learn that elevation doesn’t change outcomes, your verticality is theater.
Function 4: Foreshadowing — Dark Souls’ Landmarks as Promises
In Dark Souls, distant landmarks become future battlegrounds. You see Sen’s Fortress looming above the Undead Burg long before you ring the bells that open its gate. Elevation builds anticipation and turns space into story — the architecture itself tells you where you’re going and dares you to get there.
Foreshadowing verticality works on two timescales, which is crucial in terms of level design. On the macro scale, visible landmarks give players long-term goals and orientation: the mountain in Journey, the citadel in Half-Life 2, the colossi glimpsed across Shadow of the Colossus showcases stunning verticality in a level that enhances gameplay.. On the micro scale, a glimpse of a bridge overhead or a glow through a floor grate promises that verticality in a level will be an exciting element. this space continues — and the promise keeps players pushing forward.
Dark Souls adds a third trick: vertical loop-backs. The ladder from Undead Burg to Firelink Shrine collapses twenty minutes of progress into a single elevation change, and the reveal recontextualizes everything you’ve climbed through. Players remember that moment for years. That’s spatial storytelling no cutscene can match.
As level design fundamentals guides note, tall structures have served as landmarks across generations of games — the Shard in Mirror’s Edge, the Citadel in Half-Life 2, Dragonsreach in terms of level design is a prime example of effective verticality. Skyrim — because a visible vertical goal is the cheapest, strongest orientation tool a designer has.
To use it: pick one destination per region and make it visible from the region’s entry point. Then make the path there feel earned — the anticipation you built is a debt you have to pay.
🧩 Pro-Tip de Level Design: Verticality real importance in game design
If a height change doesn’t affect how players fight, move, or think, it’s concept art — not level design.
- Myth: “Add more floors and towers and the level will feel more vertical and interesting.”
- Reality: A single, well-placed elevation shift that changes sightlines, cover, and paths can do more gameplay work than five stacked floors.
- PRO-TIP: For every new floor plane or platform, write a one-line job description: “This elevation exists so the player can do X better than on any other layer.” If you can’t name the job, cut the geometry.
Beyond the Big Four: 8 More Jobs Verticality Does
Combat, traversal, problem-solving, and foreshadowing carry the most weight, but verticality’s full job description is longer. These eight supporting functions show up constantly in professional work — and once you can name them, you’ll start seeing them everywhere.
5. Tactical advantage and disadvantage
High ground means control; low ground means risk with better rewards. Halo Infinite‘s outposts stack snipers on ridgelines while caves underneath force close-quarters fights — each elevation is a different game. The key is making the trade explicit: if high ground has no downside, every fight degenerates into a race for the top.
6. Movement variety
Stairs, mantles, climbs, and drops keep traversal mechanically dynamic. Half-Life 2: Ravenholm alternates rooftop hopping with street-level panic, and the alternation is the point — your hands never settle into autopilot. Verticality is a pacing instrument played through the player’s own movement keys.
7. Pacing and intensity control
Climbs slow the player down; sudden drops spike adrenaline. Uncharted 2‘s collapsing hotel is a masterclass: vertical descent converts a firefight’s rhythm into pure survival panic in seconds. Use upward flow for tension-building and downward flow for release — or invert both to wrong-foot the player deliberately.
8. Platforming challenge
Vertical obstacles test skill differently from flat ones. Celeste chains vertical dashes into sequences that are really rhythm puzzles wearing a platformer’s clothes. Elevation changes the type of precision demanded — timing across a gap is not the same skill as timing up a wall — so vertical challenges expand your difficulty palette without new mechanics.
9. Sightlines and orientation
Elevation helps players reorient. A climbable vantage point is a free reconnaissance tool: players who survey an arena from above perform better in it and rate the level as “fairer” in playtests. Many designers now give players a bird’s-eye overview of combat spaces before entry — the overview is the tutorial.
[Suggested Reading: sightline design and combat arena readability]
10. Loop design and shortcuts
Vertical shortcuts fold players back into hubs. Dark Souls’ ladders and elevators are the famous example, but any level where a drop returns you to an earlier checkpoint is using verticality as connective tissue. One-way drops are especially valuable: they let players make routing decisions with no wrong answers, which keeps momentum high.
11. Spatial storytelling and psychology
Vertical hierarchy signals narrative. High reads as sacred or powerful; low reads as decay or danger. BioShock Infinite‘s floating districts versus its depths, or Resident Evil 2‘s sewers beneath the station, tell you how to feel before a single line of dialogue plays. Heights feel safe and dominant; depths feel like dread. Spend those associations deliberately.
12. Exploration and replayability
Hide secrets above ceilings and under bridges, and offer multiple vertical routes through every major space. Dark Souls’ plunging attacks into hidden zones reward players who treat elevation as a question rather than a wall. [Suggested reading : reward placement and exploration incentives in level design]
A quick reference for the full set:
| # | Function | Example | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Strategic combat | Doom Eternal | Threat angles, prioritization |
| 2 | Meaningful traversal | Dishonored | Route choice, replayability |
| 3 | Problem-solving | Breath of the Wild | Approach freedom |
| 4 | Foreshadowing | Dark Souls | Anticipation, goals |
| 5 | Tactical advantage | Halo Infinite | Risk/reward positioning |
| 6 | Movement variety | Half-Life 2 | Mechanical pacing |
| 7 | Intensity control | Uncharted 2 | Emotional pacing |
| 8 | Platforming challenge | Celeste | Skill-test variety |
| 9 | Sightlines/orientation | Arena overviews | Information, fairness |
| 10 | Loop design | Dark Souls shortcuts | Routing, momentum |
| 11 | Spatial storytelling | BioShock Infinite | Tone, narrative |
| 12 | Exploration | Hidden vertical secrets | Discovery, replay |
Verticality in Multiplayer Map Design
Multiplayer changes the math. In single-player, verticality is a conversation between the player and the designer. In multiplayer, it’s an arms race between players — and the high ground is usually the first weapon.
The high ground isn’t just about being taller. It’s a key aspect of designing levels effectively. positional advantage built on superior sightlines, stronger firing angles, and natural chokepoints that funnel opponents into predictable routes, as analyses of verticality in multiplayer map dynamics explain. Elevated players gather intel faster, track rotations earlier, and anticipate flanks before they develop. That directly shapes pacing and map control — which is why most multiplayer maps that live on a single plane feel forgettable.
Battle royale design makes this explicit. In games where vertical advantage varies radically by movement mechanics, level design uses verticality to enhance traversal fluidity and player freedom — and plants landmarks that stand out in their environment and stay visible from a distance, doubling as navigation aids for rotating squads, as the Domenation team’s devblog on verticality describes.
Three rules for multiplayer verticality:
- Every high ground needs a counter. A power position with no flank route, no sightline blocker, and no counter-angle is a balance bug, not a feature.
- Verticality must be readable at sprint speed. Players make rotation decisions in under a second; if they can’t parse the elevation structure mid-fight, the layers work against you.
- Test with real players, not bots. Bots don’t hunger for high ground. Humans do, and they will find the abusive perch you didn’t.
Common Verticality Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Every function above has an equal and opposite failure mode. Here are the ones that show up in student work, junior portfolios, and — let’s be honest — shipped games.
Mistake 1: Stacking floors to “add verticality”
This is the classic beginner error. You hear “add verticality to your levels,” so you build three, four, five stacked floors into every map — and end up confusing the player instead of challenging them. Often, one or two steps are enough to break up flatness, add variety, and signify the edge between zones, which is what matters for mental mapping. Verticality doesn’t always need to be drastic; subtle zoning is still verticality.
Fix: Ensure that verticality in a level is prioritized during the redesign process. count your floor planes. If you can’t name each one’s gameplay identity in five words, merge it with a neighbor.
Mistake 2: Height without function
A tower the player never climbs, a pit with nothing in it, a second floor that’s identical to the first. Height that changes no decision is art direction, not level design — and players will feel the emptiness even if they can’t articulate it.
Fix: run the three-question checklist from the definition section on every elevated space. Delete or redesign anything that fails to contribute to the verticality in a level.
Mistake 3: Ignoring the ceiling
Players in 3D games look up far less often than designers assume. If your vertical routes, overhead threats, or high secrets have no visual pull — light, color, motion, enemy silhouettes, rope swings, jump pads — most players will never see them, undermining the verticality in a level. Enemy movement is a powerful cue: when an enemy scales a wall or takes a vertical path, it signals to the player that they can follow.
Fix: every vertical affordance needs an upward visual hook. Playtest with a “did you notice the upper route?” question.
Mistake 4: Unbalanced high ground
If elevation is pure upside, your encounters collapse into king-of-the-hill. The high ground must cost something: exposure, distance from resources, a slower escape, a longer rotation.
Fix: for every vantage point, design its punishment. Then playtest until high-ground win rates land near parity.
Mistake 5: Vertical chaos without landmarks
More layers mean more orientation load. Without a fixed vertical reference — a central spire, a visible destination, a consistent “the light is always up” rule — players lose their bearings and blame the level.
Fix: one dominant landmark per region, visible from the entry point, visible again mid-route.
🎯 Pro-Tip for the game flow: Guiding Without Railroading
Great vertical levels feel guided, not forced — the layout whispers “this way” without hard-locking solutions.
- Myth: “If I don’t hard gate routes, players will get lost in vertical spaces.”
- Reality: Players follow contrast, motion, and payoff. You can shape their path with lighting, silhouettes, and landmark rewards while still offering multiple viable routes.
- PRO-TIP: In any three-lane vertical layout, give each lane a clear identity (safe but slow, risky but fast, skill-heavy with high reward). Playtest whether players can describe those identities after one run.
A Practical Workflow for Building Vertical Levels
Theory is cheap; blockouts are expensive. Here’s a workflow that front-loads vertical decisions so you’re not re-sculpting geometry after art pass.
📌 Action Plan to achieve a vertical level effective and engaging
- Map your floor planes in side view. Sketch your level from the side and define 3–5 distinct elevations, each with a short label (e.g., “vantage layer”, “rotation ring”, “escape trench”) that explains its gameplay job.
- Assign trades and cues to every layer. For each elevation, decide what the player gains and loses by being there (angles, cover, resources) and add clear visual cues — lighting, silhouettes, motion — so that path options are readable at a glance.
- Playtest flow and iterate ruthlessly. Run sessions focused on vertical navigation and combat: observe whether players use alternate routes, understand high/low trade-offs, and stay oriented. Cut or merge any layer that doesn’t see meaningful use or creates confusion.
Step 1: Define the vertical thesis
Write one sentence: The importance of verticality in a level cannot be overstated in effective level design. “In this level, height means ___.” Control? Freedom? Dread? Every later decision checks against this sentence. Doom Eternal’s arenas would say “height means survival.” Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule would say “height means options.”
Step 2: Sketch floor planes, not rooms
Draw the level in side view first — a pure elevation profile. Mark three to five floor planes maximum, and label each with its gameplay identity (vantage, rotation, refuge, gauntlet). If the side view is boring, the level will be too, no matter how good the floor plan looks.
Step 3: Block out connections before destinations
Stairs, ramps, ladders, mantles, drops, and jump pads are where verticality is essential in designing levels. felt. Block these first at final metrics — a mantle that ships at 2.5 meters needs to be 2.5 meters in the blockout, because every route length and sightline downstream depends on it. Remember that upward flow is expensive: stairs and ladders require reserved space, and climbing costs player time, so make each ascent pay for itself.
Step 4: Place the landmark and the loop-back
Add your one dominant vertical landmark and at least one shortcut that folds a later plane back into an earlier one. Test the loop-back reveal specifically — that moment of “wait, I’m here?” is disproportionately memorable.
Step 5: Playtest vertically, not just spatially
Standard playtests ask “where did you go?” Vertical playtests must also ask: Did you look up? Did you use the high route? Why not? Track heatmaps in 3D, and treat any floor plane with near-zero traffic as a design failure — either its value proposition is broken or its discoverability is.
Step 6: Iterate the trades, not the geometry
When playtests reveal imbalance, resist rebuilding. Adjust what each elevation offers — cover density, resource placement, sightline blockers — before touching the planes themselves. Vertical structure is load-bearing; values are not.
💡 Mattt’s take
As an expert game designer, I treat every level’s vertical structure as a design document, not a decoration pass. If I can’t explain what each elevation does for combat, traversal, or pacing in two sentences, that layer is probably noise.
My rule of thumb is simple: no orphan floors. Every layer must connect to player goals — better sightlines, safer flanks, more expressive routes — or it doesn’t ship. This keeps verticality readable and ensures production time goes into gameplay value, not empty geometry.
Developer Stories: Learning Verticality the Hard Way
“It took me an embarrassingly long time.” — A level design instructor’s confession
A senior level designer and course instructor — now preparing the fourth cohort of his Level Design Mastery program — opens his own curriculum with a confession: as a junior designer, he didn’t understand verticality’s functions at all. “It took me an embarrassingly long time to see what real gameplay work it does,” he writes, before listing the same four core functions this guide opens with: Doom Eternal’s 360-degree combat pressure, Dishonored’s puzzle-box traversal, Breath of the Wild’s freedom of approach, and Dark Souls’ landmark foreshadowing.
The context matters. This isn’t a theory from a textbook — it’s a postmortem from someone who shipped levels, taught hundreds of students, and still frames verticality as the concept that took him longest to truly internalize. His problem wasn’t seeing height; it was seeing function. The lesson he now teaches first: verticality is a tool with jobs to do, and “make the level more interesting” is not one of them.
“I built five floors just to have more verticality.” — Denis Armand, level designer
Denis Armand, a level designer discussing the topic with peers on LinkedIn, describes the mirror-image mistake. When he was starting out and heard the advice “add verticality to your levels,” he responded by building three, four, five floors into his maps — “just to have more verticality, which in the end would only confuse the player.” His breakthrough was discovering zoning: “Sometimes only 1–2 steps are enough to break up the flatness, add just a smidge of variety and signify an edge between zones, which is important for mental mapping.”
His account is the perfect counterweight to the big-budget examples above. You don’t need Doom Eternal’s budget to use verticality well. A single flight of steps that tells the player “you are leaving the safe zone and entering the combat zone” is verticality doing real work — for the cost of a dozen polygons. Armand now advocates for subtle elevation as a first resort, not a fallback: drastic verticality is a spice, and most levels need less of it than juniors think.
Both stories land on the same truth from opposite directions. Verticality fails when it’s treated as quantity — more height, more floors, more towers — and succeeds when it’s treated as function: named jobs, deliberate trades, readable planes.
💡 Matt’s take
Verticality is one of the fastest ways to reveal whether a level designer understands player psychology. If your high ground has no downside and your low ground has no upside, you’re not designing choices — you’re handing out obvious answers.
When I review levels, I look for interesting trade spaces: platforms where the “correct” move depends on the player’s style, loadout, or risk tolerance. That’s when verticality stops being a visual gimmick and starts feeling like authored game design.
Principles and Functions of Verticality in Video Game Design
| Design Principle or Function | Definition or Purpose | Game Examples | Key Benefits | Implementation Strategy |
| Verticality (Core Definition) | The use of the third axis ( $Z$ -axis) as a genuine gameplay dimension to structure movement, spatial experience, and progression. | Dark Souls , Tomb Raider , Breath of the Wild , Dying Light , Super Mario Galaxy | Provides tactical variation, space compression, navigational choice, and clear visual goals for orientation. | Create multiple levels with meaningful connections; adjust building heights to support gradual engagement and readability. |
| Strategic Combat & Tactical Advantage | Using height to provide superior sightlines, firing angles, and 360-degree threat management. | Doom Eternal , Halo Infinite , Dishonored , Valorant | Increases encounter density; allows intel gathering and rotation tracking; forces risk/reward decisions. | Assign distinct tactical identities to floor planes; ensure high ground costs exposure or effort (staircases/ladders) to reach. |
| Meaningful Traversal | Converting level geometry into player expression and navigational choice through alternate paths like rooftops and ledges. | Dishonored , Dark Souls , Breath of the Wild | Enhances replayability; empowers players to bypass obstacles/patrols; increases information density. | Ensure vertical routes are visible, valuable (safer/faster), and connected via sophisticated joints like ladders or elevators. |
| Landmarks & Wayfinding (“The Wienie”) | Large, highly visible reference points (geographic anchors) used to draw attention, orient the player, and pull them forward. | Dark Souls (Anor Londo), Journey , Breath of the Wild (Hyrule Castle), Skyrim (Bleak Falls Barrow) | Solves navigation problems without UI; builds mental maps; provides a free reconnaissance tool. | Place distinctive silhouettes at three scales (Macro, Meso, Micro) visible from early points; use vertical loop-backs to show progress. |
| Spatial Storytelling & World Building | Using physical layout, environmental details, and vertical hierarchy to convey narrative, tone, or power dynamics. | BioShock Infinite , Resident Evil 2 , Dishonored , Dead Space , Gone Home | Respects player intelligence; creates a “living city” feel; communicates mood or status before dialogue. | Associate high zones with power/sacredness and low zones with decay; use layered detail (surface to deep) and environmental clues. |
| Floor Plane Management | Chunking vertical space into discrete, readable horizontal layers (typically bottom, middle, and top). | Not in source | Reduces cognitive load and prevents player frustration; simplifies the mental map of complex spaces. | Limit to 3–5 clear planes; merge minor height changes into single floors; omit trivial ground floors in design drawings. |
| Loop Design & Shortcuts | Using verticality as connective tissue to fold players back into hub areas or earlier checkpoints. | Dark Souls (ladders and elevators) | Collapses progress into single elevation changes; maintains high routing momentum; rewards exploration. | Implement one-way drops or unlockable shortcuts (e.g., kicked-down ladders) that return players to safety. |
| Vistas & Reveals | Designed moments where camera and geometry conspire to show a vast, awe-inspiring view. | Half-Life 2 (The Citadel), Breath of the Wild , Dark Souls , Hollow Knight | Creates memorable “wow” moments; provides emotional rewards for overcoming challenges. | Constrain the approach through narrow spaces; compose the shot with foreground/background layers; signal with music. |
| Pacing & Intensity Control | Manipulating emotional rhythm and player stress through upward and downward flow. | Uncharted 2 , Journey , Dark Souls III , Shadow of the Colossus | Slow climbs build tension; sudden drops spike adrenaline; provides a visual indicator of mastery. | Use upward flow for tension-building and downward flow for release; build levels around a central “summit” goal. |
| Downward Flow (One-way Drops) | Using gravity-assisted descent to create points of no return. | Puzzle exploration games , Shooters | Limits searchable space; forces players into combat; prevents backtracking to chokepoints. | Implement ledges where the player can drop down but cannot climb back up, signaling previous areas are irrelevant. |
| Upward Flow | Facilitating movement against gravity through specific environmental tools or architecture. | Quake 3 Arena (The Longest Yard) | Creates dynamic movement and flight arcs; facilitates high-ground advantages. | Reserve space for stairs, ramps, and ladders; use jump pads, teleporters, or elevators for high-intensity movement. |
| Gamepad-Friendly Verticality | Adapting design to accommodate the input limitations of analog sticks and fixed turning rates. | Halo , Call of Duty | Reduces frustration and “unfair” deaths caused by slow vertical camera rotation. | Use wide landscapes with shallow slopes and discrete, relatively flat floor planes; avoid high-frequency height variation. |
| Blink-Centric / Vertical Traversal Tools | Providing specific abilities (teleport, glide, grapple) to solve the problem of upright movement. | Dishonored (Blink), Breath of the Wild (Paraglider), Portal | Incentivizes upward travel; prevents frustration; enables momentum-based puzzles and “playful epiphanies.” | Design levels with assets like pipes, lampposts, and balconies as intentional anchors for movement tools. |
| Swiss Cheese Level Design | Creating a solid structure containing multiple alternate openings and paths to the same objective. | Dishonored (Lady Boyle’s Last Party) | Ensures no “wrong” way to progress; rewards curiosity and respects player intelligence. | Provide diverse entry points such as sewer grates, second-story balconies, and front doors. |
| Lighting & Color Contrast | Using psychological triggers and contrast to highlight vertical paths in the environment. | Dead Space , Alien: Isolation , Amnesia , Breath of the Wild | Directs attention to objectives; paces exploration; signals available vertical routes. | Use the breadcrumb technique; place lights or high-contrast colors (e.g., yellow ledges) on interactive vertical elements. |
| Strategic Rewards (Breadcrumbs) | Placing valuable assets in high or hard-to-reach places to reward vertical curiosity. | Fallout 4 , Dying Light | Provides tactical advantages, loot, and navigation shortcuts; encourages non-linear exploration. | Place rare chests, ammo, or enemy patrol mapping opportunities at the top of vertical structures. |
| Enemy & Pressure Management | Using enemy density and ranged pressure to influence vertical movement. | Dying Light , Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 | Increases stress at low elevations, motivating players to seek safer vertical vantage points. | Use enemy congestion or long-range threats at ground level to redirect players toward vertical alternate routes. |
| Competitive / Situational Verticality | Limited verticality in multiplayer environments to reward coordination without frustrating aim. | Counter-Strike (stacking/boosting), Apex Legends | Rewards team planning; allows players to see over obstacles while maintaining mouse precision. | Restrict constant height changes; implement specific mechanics like player-stacking; test terrain for spawn balance. |
| Vertical Flanking & Rotations | Using tiered pathways to open non-obvious routes through a map. | Dust II (Mid entries), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Nuke) | Bypasses guarded zones; provides options beyond direct confrontation; splits defender focus. | Use low ground like trenches for concealed rotations; layer objectives across elevations to create tactical tension. |
| Platforming Challenge | Precision jumping and climbing as a core skill test. | Celeste | Expands the difficulty palette without adding new mechanics. | Chain vertical dashes or rhythm puzzles together to test different types of precision. |
| Spatial Contrast | Creating distinct differences in character and mechanics based on height (above vs. below). | Dishonored 2 , Hexopolis | Provides a sense of safety (high) vs. vulnerability (low) and influences resource costs. | Layer areas such as crawling guard zones on bottom floors and quiet exploration zones on upper floors. |
| Unrestricted Movement Strategy | Avoiding artificial restrictions on vertical movement to preserve the “possibility space.” | Hexopolis | Encourages risky/creative construction; prevents players from feeling trapped. | Move away from mechanics that limit players from moving to higher elevations to ensure high replayability. |
Conclusion: Build Upward, Not Outward
Verticality in level design is not a visual flourish — it’s twelve distinct gameplay functions wearing one name. Strategic combat, meaningful traversal, player-driven problem-solving, and landmark foreshadowing do the heavy lifting, while tactical trade-offs, pacing control, orientation, loop design, and spatial storytelling fill out the toolkit.
The designers who struggle with verticality all make the same mistake: they treat it as a quantity — more floors, more height — instead of a set of functions with named jobs. The designers who master it ask a better question: what work is this elevation doing?
So here’s your next step. Open your current blockout, count your floor planes, and label each one’s gameplay identity in five words. If you can’t, you now know exactly what to fix — and exactly which game to study for the fix. Want structured, feedback-driven practice with these concepts? A dedicated level design course or mentorship cohort will compress years of trial and error into weeks — pick one with blockout reviews, and bring your verticality questions to the first session focused on terms of level design.
Article Key Takeaways
- Verticality is vertical flow — how it feels to move upward and downward through a level — not just the presence of tall geometry.
- The four core functions are strategic combat, meaningful traversal, player-driven problem-solving, and foreshadowing through landmarks.
- High ground is a positional advantage built on sightlines and firing angles, not just elevation — and it must be balanced with risk.
- One or two steps of height change can zone a space as effectively as five stacked floors; more layers often means more confusion.
- Distant landmarks turn space into story: if the player can see a destination, elevation has already started foreshadowing it.
- Chunk your verticality into readable floor planes during blockout, and merge minor height changes into single floors to protect player orientation.
[Suggested Reading: building a level design portfolio that gets you hired]
Mastering Verticality in Game Design Quizz
Quiz: Verticality in Level Design for Effective Game Worlds
Test your understanding of verticality in level design — from floor planes and high-ground trade-offs to guiding players without railroading. Each question is based on practical game and level design patterns discussed in the article.
Time limit: 10 minutes
Quiz Completed!
FAQ game design: verticality in the game world for an effective level
What is verticality in level design?
Verticality in level design is the intentional use of height differences — platforms, stairs, cliffs, ledges, and stacked floors — so that players move and make decisions across multiple elevations, not just horizontally. It’s best understood as vertical flow: how it feels to move upward and downward through a space. True verticality changes gameplay — your routes, your combat options, or your information — rather than simply adding tall geometry to a scene.
Why is verticality important in game levels?
Verticality does at least twelve gameplay jobs, with four core ones: enabling strategic 360° combat (Doom Eternal), creating meaningful alternate traversal routes (Dishonored), letting players solve spaces their own way (Breath of the Wild), and foreshadowing future destinations through landmarks (Dark Souls). It also controls pacing, provides tactical high-ground trade-offs, aids orientation, and expands exploration. Flat levels rarely survive contact with players who’ve experienced well-designed vertical ones.
How do you add verticality to a level without confusing players?
Chunk the level into three to five readable floor planes, each with a distinct gameplay identity, and merge minor height changes into single floors. Give every vertical route a visual hook — light, color, or motion — because players look up far less than designers expect. Place one dominant landmark per region for orientation, and add vertical shortcuts that loop back to earlier areas to improve the terms of level design. Often one or two steps of elevation are enough to zone a space; stacking floors usually hurts mental mapping.
Which games use verticality best?
Frequently cited exemplars include Doom Eternal (vertical combat layers), Dishonored (rooftop traversal as alternate routes), Breath of the Wild (climbing and gliding as player-driven problem-solving), Dark Souls (landmark foreshadowing and vertical world loops), Halo Infinite (high-ground tactical trade-offs), Celeste (vertical platforming challenge), and BioShock Infinite (vertical spatial storytelling). Each showcases a different function, so study them as a set rather than ranking them.
How does verticality affect multiplayer map balance?
In multiplayer, high ground is a positional advantage built on superior sightlines, firing angles, and intel gathering — elevated players track rotations and anticipate flanks faster. To keep maps balanced, every power position needs a counter: a flank route, a sightline blocker, or a counter-angle. Vertical structure must also be readable at sprint speed, since rotation decisions happen in under a second, and it should always be tested with human players rather than bots.
What’s the difference between verticality and platforming?
Platforming is a challenge type — precision jumping and climbing as the core skill test. Verticality is a spatial property — the presence of meaningful height differences in a level. A level can be highly vertical with zero platforming (Dishonored’s rooftops, crossed with a teleport) or a pure platformer that’s almost flat (an endless runner). Platforming is one of the twelve functions verticality can serve, not a synonym for it.
What is verticality in level design and why does it matter for game design?
Verticality in level design refers to the use of the z-axis to create layers, heights, and depth that players can navigate — think ledges, platforms, multi-story buildings, shafts and climbing routes familiar from platformers, Metroid, or the Tomb Raider series. It matters because it expands level layouts beyond a flat plane, enables alternate routes, supports gameplay reasons like stealth or line-of-sight control (important in Counter-Strike or Call of Duty maps), and helps guide the player through pacing, flow in level design, and engaging gameplay experiences.
How do you guide the player when using vertical level design without forcing them?
To guide the player in a three lane or three lane typology vertical space, combine visual cues (lighting, contrast, concept art-inspired silhouettes), gameplay elements (ladders, jump pads, grappling hooks), and layout design that suggests approach to level design without a single forced path. Use scale, readable art style, and landmarking—like a rooftop garden or a bright window—to dynamically draw attention. This balances freedom in single player levels and multiplayer flow while avoiding designs that force the player into one narrow solution.
What design techniques from classic design and platformers help make an effective level with verticality?
Borrowing from classic design and 2D games or 3D platformer traditions, use platform spacing, rhythm, and risk-reward placement of items to teach movement intuitively. Alternate high and low routes to allow different playstyles (speedrunners, explorers), provide checkpoints on vertical ascents, and introduce game mechanics progressively so the player learns to use z-axis traversal. Examples from Super Mario, Metroid, or Sekiro show how traversal mechanics become core gameplay elements rather than obstacles.
How does verticality affect flow in level design for different genres like stealth, shooters, and adventure games?
Verticality changes sightlines, cover, and choke points: in shooters like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, high ground offers tactical advantage; in stealth games it enables vertical approaches and multi-tiered patrols; in exploration-focused game worlds (Zelda game or City of Rapture style atmospheres) it creates discovery and layered storytelling. Good level layouts ensure players can progress through the level using multiple viable strategies, with elements in your level supporting both movement and combat while maintaining an engaging gameplay experience.
What pitfalls should a game designer avoid when designing vertical levels and how do you test an effective level?
Common pitfalls include overcomplicating navigation, poor camera control, unclear routes that force the player, and failing to account for game mechanic interactions across heights. Avoid layouts that make dead ends or invisible barriers. Test iteratively with playtesting focused on flow in level design, observing whether players can find alternate routes, if the z-axis introduces frustration, and whether platform spacing and concept art cues effectively guide the player. Use metrics from play sessions and qualitative feedback to refine level layouts until the verticality enhances rather than impedes the gameplay experience in terms of level design.
Game Developer | Designer | Creative Storyteller
Matt Dogherby is a passionate game developer and designer based in Brisbane, Australia. With a career spanning over 15 years, Matt combines technical skill with a deep love for storytelling to create games that captivate and inspire. His unique perspective is shaped by the laid-back energy of Brisbane and his lifelong connection to the ocean, where he often trades coding sessions for surf sessions.
