If you are making levels professionally, you cannot just jump in the engine and placing shapes and mechanics here and there. You need a way of plan and communicate your design choices ahead. The big picture of the level and how it fits into the overall scheme of things is very much needed.
That’s why we use beat charts, a spreadsheet that puts everything in perspective. In my case, I have these fields:
- Level ID: Unique name for the level, it should also correspond to the actual scene or map name inside of the engine.
- Layout: a screenshot (or a link to a screenshot) of the level so that you and your teammates can directly recognize them when you have dozens levels.
- Skill atom: the original unique thing the Player should learn or confirm during this level
- Twist: if there is a special twist, describe it here. This can be filled later and just planned with a true/false text
- List of mechanics: each column a single mechanic and a true/false if that mechanic is present inside of a level. Put the columns in order of appearance
- Difficulty: the % of players who will not pass the level or die at least once.
- Narrative: a short brief of what you are conveying to the Players (it can be a story, but also specific emotions)
- Mood: useful to suggest your mood to environment art or in general artists. Try to put a mood board for them to understand. You can reuse the same mood boards over and over, of course. In this way you will also predict the weight of your design choices.
- Music: similar to mood but put your musical references focusing on the feeling the Player should experiment during the level.