Without the help of colors, text, movement, sounds, etc. the mere change of forms as you progress through the level can reveal new facets of history. Look here, at the beginning of the level you are surrounded by pure smooth forms, and then irregularities appear. Even from the abstraction of the following picture, you can roughly understand what happened. Probably, a fragment of some story has already flickered in your imagination.
By the way, many interesting ideas can be gleaned by studying the post-modernism striving for originality in architecture. Highly recommend. Contemporary art does not have a very good reputation, but architecture is usually too expensive to play full of mediocrity with it. A quick checking to https://cakeboost.com can be perfect here.
Unique frames
Vista is a view that opens up to the player, so breathtaking. In open-world games, the vista is most often the highest point on a tower or mountain from where you look around. We all remember the famous synchronization process in Assassin’s Creed. For other games, epic views are created specifically, and not just allow us to look from top to bottom.
A separate subspecies or vista can be considered hero assets. As a rule, these are especially noteworthy objects of the environment, often used only once during the whole game. They are paid attention to, they are remembered, and they are guided, while they run around the level. In principle, a well-known example is the famous Citadel, towering above City-17.
Vista and hero assets can help you make more memorable levels, add a twist to them, but know the measure. You can fall into the trap and give them too much attention instead of those assets that will be used hundreds or thousands of times.
Think ten times whether you will definitely need this unique content and whether you have the strength to create it. It is especially important to soberly evaluate your strengths for indie developers with extremely limited production resources.
Interactive and dynamic
Unlike the previous paragraph, this one is relatively easy to create and use. Whatever moves in your location – it’s cool. Simply put, any dynamic objects breathe life into the game. Try to add burning torches, flags swaying in the wind, pouring water from pipes, waterfalls, swaying vines, flocks of birds overhead and so on. It is difficult to describe in words, this must be felt when you add dynamics to a static level, and it transforms before our eyes.
Here you can add interactive objects with which the user can interact. They become an important part of the gaming experience, and not just static in the background. The door can be opened, the lever can be pressed, the wall can be broken, the barrel can be blown up, and the column can be dumped. In “Diablo III” it was used quite often. For example, a classic example with a lever that allows you to bring down a massive chandelier on the head of enemies or a stone wall collapsing when the hero passes by and accidentally touches it.