How to Design a Shortcut in a Level

A level shortcut—a faster route through a level—rewards exploration or mastery and feels satisfying to unlock, especially the classic shortcut the player opens from the far side after taking the long way around. Designing rewarding, satisfying shortcuts is what makes them a beloved level design element.

Shortcuts reward exploration or mastery

A good level shortcut rewards exploration or mastery—giving a faster route to players who explore or master the level. Shortcuts rewarding exploration mean the shortcut is found or opened through exploration (discovering the shortcut, or reaching and opening it through exploration), so exploring is rewarded with the faster route. Shortcuts rewarding mastery mean the shortcut rewards mastering the level (a faster route for skilled players, or a shortcut opened through skillful play), so mastery is rewarded with efficiency. Either way, the shortcut rewards the player's exploration or mastery with a faster, more efficient route, which is satisfying (the reward of efficiency for exploration or mastery), as discussed in rewarding exploration and shortcuts in level design. Shortcuts rewarding exploration or mastery—giving a faster route as a reward—is the foundation of a good shortcut, rewarding the player's engagement with efficiency.

Unlocking the shortcut feels satisfying. The classic, beloved shortcut is one the player unlocks satisfyingly—often opening a shortcut from the far side after taking the long way around. Unlocking the shortcut satisfyingly means the player opens the shortcut in a way that feels rewarding—the classic example being a shortcut (a door, a passage) that the player reaches by taking the long way around and then opens from the far side, creating a shortcut back for next time, which is deeply satisfying (the player has opened a permanent shortcut through their progress, as discussed in Metroidvania shortcuts). This unlocking (opening the shortcut, often from the far side) feels satisfying because it rewards the player's progress with a lasting efficiency—the shortcut they've opened making future traversal faster, a tangible reward for their progress. The satisfaction of opening a shortcut (especially from the far side after the long way) is a beloved level design moment, rewarding progress with a permanent efficiency. Unlocking the shortcut feeling satisfying—the rewarding act of opening a shortcut, often from the far side—is what makes shortcuts a beloved element. Combining shortcuts rewarding exploration or mastery (the faster route as a reward) with unlocking the shortcut feeling satisfying (the rewarding act of opening it) is what makes a good level shortcut—rewarding exploration or mastery with a faster route, satisfying to unlock. Designing shortcuts this way—rewarding exploration or mastery, satisfying to unlock—is what makes them a beloved level design element, rewarding the player's engagement with a faster route and the satisfaction of opening a shortcut, especially the classic far-side shortcut. Design shortcuts that reward exploration or mastery and feel satisfying to unlock, often the classic shortcut opened from the far side after the long way around, and they become a beloved level design element, rewarding the player's progress with efficiency and the satisfaction of opening a lasting shortcut, which is what makes shortcuts a rewarding, satisfying part of level design.

Measure before you optimise

Intuition about what's slow, what's confusing, or what's driving players away is usually wrong, and acting on it wastes effort on problems that don't matter while the real ones persist. The developers who improve their games efficiently are the ones who measure first — profiling performance, watching real sessions, capturing actual errors — and let the data set their priorities.

It's slower than trusting your gut, but it's the only approach that reliably improves the game instead of just changing it. Find the biggest real problem, fix that, and measure again, rather than optimising guesses.

The first impression is most of the battle

More players leave in the opening minutes than at any other point, which makes the first few minutes the highest-leverage stretch of the whole game — and also the part the developer can least see clearly, having played it a thousand times. What feels obvious to you is often confusing to someone seeing it fresh, and that gap quietly costs you players before they ever reach the good part.

Get the player into the interesting part fast, let them feel competent quickly, and watch first-time players go through the opening without helping them. Nobody quits a game they're enjoying, so making the early minutes land is most of the battle for retention.

Small and finished beats big and abandoned

A folder of impressive unfinished projects teaches far less than a single small finished one, because finishing is where the hardest and most valuable lessons live — the unglamorous final stretch of bug-fixing, polishing, and shipping that ambitious abandoned projects never reach. Each completed game, however modest, builds the finishing muscle and the confidence that make the next one achievable.

So resist the pull of the dream project until you've shipped a few small ones. Scope to what you can actually complete, finish it, and let the experience of shipping make your bigger ambitions realistic.

Trust behaviour over opinions

People are unreliable narrators of their own experience — they're polite, they rationalise, they suggest fixes that miss the real problem. What they do tells the truth that what they say obscures: where they hesitate, where they get stuck, what they ignore, where they quit. The most valuable feedback is usually the behaviour you observe, not the opinion you're offered.

This is why watching beats asking, and why real data about what players actually do beats any amount of speculation. When several people stumble at the same spot, that's a problem worth fixing, regardless of whether any of them mentioned it.

Ship it, then learn from it

No amount of internal deliberation substitutes for the information you get the moment real players touch your game. The assumptions that felt certain turn out wrong, the feature you doubted becomes the favourite, and the problem you never imagined is the one everyone hits. That feedback only exists on the other side of shipping.

So bias toward getting something real in front of real people sooner rather than later. A rough thing that's out in the world teaches you more in a week than another month of private refinement, and every release makes the next decision better informed.

A good level shortcut rewards exploration or mastery with a faster route and feels satisfying to unlock—especially the classic shortcut the player opens from the far side after taking the long way around. Design shortcuts that reward exploration or mastery and are satisfying to unlock, a beloved level design element.