--- title: Eight Level Design Guidelines | daily.dev description: A game director shares eight level design guidelines originally written for WildStar and later applied to Outer Worlds. The rules cover: designing for... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/eight-level-design-guidelines-t3srw4taf twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Eight Level Design Guidelines | daily.dev og:description: A game director shares eight level design guidelines originally written for WildStar and later applied to Outer Worlds. The rules cover: designing for... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/eight-level-design-guidelines-t3srw4taf og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/T3sRw4TaF.png og:image:alt: Eight Level Design Guidelines og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Eight Level Design Guidelines **[Cain on Games](https://daily.dev/sources/cainongames)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A game director shares eight level design guidelines originally written for WildStar and later applied to Outer Worlds. The rules cover: designing for non-linear player behavior, supporting all play-through builds on main story quests, balancing side quests across play styles, leaving room for side quests on maps, ensuring at least one point of interest is visible outdoors, using anchored vs. non-anchored encounters, rewarding exploration with off-quest discoveries, and using predictable NPC patrol paths for stealth-friendly areas. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#game-design](https://daily.dev/tags/game-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/eight-level-design-guidelines-t3srw4taf) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Eight Level Design Guidelines","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/eight-level-design-guidelines-t3srw4taf","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/eight-level-design-guidelines-t3srw4taf"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:58:48.013Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T07:59:16.027Z","description":"A game director shares eight level design guidelines originally written for WildStar and later applied to Outer Worlds. 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