The Level Design Book

The Level Design Book gathers level design knowledge for 3D video games in an approachable, up-to-date, and critical way. It is for designers of all experience levels and game engines.

This book is heavily under construction. Structure may change a lot, and some pages may have little / no content yet.

Recent major updates

• January 2025: added Recommended talks

Read the book

What is level design?

Start reading here!

How to make a level

Overview of the process

Studies

Critical essays & design analysis of levels.

Tools

List of level editors and moddable games

Assets & resources

Links to free 2D/3D assets, info, other books, etc.

Notes for educators

Advice for teaching, how to use this book in class

This online book is free to read forever, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. We will never sell or paywall access to this book. If you translate parts of this book, you may not sell copies or access to the translation. For more info, see our license and copyright page.