Does a game need 'levels'?

I’m working on a mobile OUYA game at the moment I did plan to have one endless level where the player plays for as long as possible to get the highest score. It got me thinking though if one level is enough or do players expect more from games?

What’s your thoughts?

It depends on the type of game. Think about the shootemup Swiv on the Amiga, which was well known for its very long single level, which in part was a matter of overcoming hardware restrains by spooling new content from a floppy disk during gameplay. Then there are mobile games with short pick-up-put-down attention spans and the need for short gratification periods, thus levels. But desktop games can deal with longer levels and I think Ouya is going to be closer to desktop-style games since you’ll be sitting down to spend time with your beloved cube. If you need to break things down into worlds for some kind of thematic reason, e.g. ice world, lava world, or something where you need to use different assets for level design, it’d make sense to do that. But if your game is essentially the same all the way through, you have to look at whether breaking things up would help with pacing or progression or a sense of achievement, etc… end-of-level bosses were created for a reason, for example. But if you have the kind of game like an infinite runner which has no real end it doesn’t make as much sense to have levels. I don’t know that there is a perfect answer here, it depends on what your game is like. Since you said mobile I’d suggest almost definitely have lots of short levels, or one endless one.

Depends on what you’re making and who is it for. Personally I’m not sure what most people expect from games, maybe people do expect games to be strictly divided in levels. Or maybe some target audiences do, and others don’t.

But what I personally think is: not necessarily, or simply put NO.

I believe a game doesn’t need anything other than give the player a chance to play it in exchange of an experience. Eg. that game Proteus. On one hand I was a bit disappointed because I was expecting more interactivity in exchange for the lack of gameplay features, but nevertheless it offers a certain weird and unique experience, as short as it is I think it’s a very artistic and a fantastic world.

In the other hand, we have games that fit themselves tightly in their target audience’s expectations. God forbids customers have to deal with something different and ask for a refund!
Man, one good example is angry bird’s level selector (particularly in mobile), I hate it, yet why so many games use it? I really really think it shouldn’t be used nearly as much in games. It’s the dullest most boring way possible to have player progress through the game.
What happened to super mario world’s “level selection”?? Yeah, you finish your level and you’re still mario, you’re still on the island, and you have to move your mario butt around to get where you want to be, it’s awesome!
Now, only because angry birds set a standard, mobile game industry decided they have to mimic everything, including the dull level selector. I do like angry birds because its simplicity and fun, but if you ask me, the level selector is hardly “it”. So long story short, if you ask me don’t try to do too much what target audience should expect, do what you think it would be mad fun, and throw it at their heads and see what happens! Good luck!

Thanks for the replies.

My game is a shoot em up, in a city taken over by…zombies (yeah i know), at the moment you have to kill endless zombies until you die which in itself is quite fun since you’re flying an unmanned quadcopter, however I think it might get boring fast.

Just because you don’t split the game into levels doesn’t meant you can’t keep in varied. I think its a good plan to break the “rules”, create something different.

Things get monotonous and boring only when you stop showing the player new things. If they get too used to the controls, too used to the basic act of shooting, too used to what things look like etc or the challenges they have to keep doing, it’s going to lose its longevity.

I was playing Draw Something for quite a long time but eventually it became a boring chore… because over time you hit the limits of what’s fresh and new and things stay inside the box too much. Whether you call it levels or not you need to give the user fresh experiences and new angles of thought.

Flourish doesnt have Levels at all, the only Place we switch scenes is Caves and some Hollow trees that act as upwards Caves if u will. Im not sure it will work sinc eim cramming in alot of highres textures, but it can certainly be done.

We’re also adding variety in the enviroment even tho its one scene, by slowly introduing New enviroment changes and so on, i think it Works.

1 long loadtime is better than 100 small ones if u ask me.

double post when i click once, thanks unity forums

That’s actually what a buddy I are doing; one level but different activities but if you use a lot of resources I suppose you’ll have to swap out resources on changing levels to manage memory.

Our motivation was practically speaking we want to use as few resources as possible, given our budget, to make a game that runs nicely from iPod 4 to the grooviest new mobile iOS 7 devices.

A game needs nothing but players; anything beyond that is merely structure or guidance.

I suppose if its a infinite game without levels then maybe have something like achievements – ski safaria for example where you unlock different starting animals, or unlock a higher max combo. I suppose something to keep the player coming back, but if there is enough variety in it like binding of issac with its 100’s of items with near limitless combinations, different bosses so that the game becomes repayable to the nth degree.

It depends on the game and the player. I like to think of this using a car metaphor. There are two basic types of transmissions in cars: standard and automatic. With standard, you are very aware of the charging gear, as you are changing it and can pace it yourself. With automatic, all the shifting happens in the background and you only need to focus on the steering. There are people who prefer standard, like myself (both metaphorically and literally), and there are people who like automatic. There are cars that try to appeal to both groups of people, such as those with a tiptropic transmission or paddle shifters, but along the way it always involves cutting some form of control for the people who like manual, such as a clutch or an actual shifter. These cars all have an automatic mode in them.

If you want to cater to the infinite runner game audience, make an automatic or tiptropic car. If you want to cater to the linear and role playing game audience, make your game manual.