10 Video Games With Genuinely Impressive Level Design

What makes Double Fine's Psychonauts such a shining example of great level design is how the variety and challenge of every level directly corresponds to specific characters.

Psychonauts could have stuck to its platforming genre and conveyed its numerous narratives through visual design. Instead, it goes a step further by also changing its mechanics.

For example, entering the mind of a feared monster thrusts you into a world where you're a giant kaiju terrorizing the monster citizens of an imagined city. By acting as a lumbering, brutish villain, you come understand the monster's actual vulnerability.

But the most iconic example is The Milk Man Conspiracy. Taking place in the paranoid mind of a conspiracy-obsessed milk man, the player explores a quaint slice of suburban Americana. But in addition to being filled with shady government agents and façade homes, the level also winds through space like a ribbon.

The ease with which you can fall off an edge to your death is an example of the game using its sometimes problematic camera to an advantage: like the milk man, you develop anxiety yourself over any potential wrong move.