How important is spatial coherence in Metroidvania level design?
I've been thinking about something while playing Metroidvanias: how important is it for the world to actually make spatial sense?
I love labyrinthine maps. Getting lost, finding shortcuts, coming back somewhere from an unexpected direction, slowly building a mental map... that's a huge part of why I love the genre.
But I'm starting to think there's a big difference between a world being labyrinthine and a world simply not following its own spatial logic.
I'm replaying Hollow Knight right now after getting all the Steam achievements, and honestly, the more I replay it, the more I notice how controlled Hallownest is. It's incredibly complex, but most of the time I still feel like I'm moving through an actual place rather than a collection of rooms.
Fallen Tear is a convenient recent example of the opposite feeling I sometimes get. I'm using it because it just came out and I'm currently playing it, not because I want to shit on the game. I actually think it's visually beautiful.
These two screenshots are a good example.
In the first one, I'm standing in front of a huge tree with a dark opening. Visually, everything tells me: I'm about to enter this tree.
So naturally my brain builds a mental model. I'm going inside the trunk. It could be one small room or an entire network of passages, I don't care.
Then I enter and get the second screenshot.
It's suddenly a huge open environment with what looks like another gigantic tree inside.
And my brain just went: wait... where am I?
This isn't about realism. It's fantasy. Put an entire kingdom inside the tree if you want. But then establish that somehow.
What interests me is the relationship between what the environment tells the player and the mental map the player builds.
If I enter the bottom of a giant tree and climb through several rooms, I love being able to think: "OK, I must be somewhere near the top of the trunk now." And if I eventually emerge onto a branch that I saw earlier from outside, that's incredibly satisfying.
The world can be extremely labyrinthine while still having an internal geography.
And that's where I'd genuinely love to hear from people who know more about level design or have worked in studios.
I've never worked in a game studio and this isn't remotely my actual job, so I don't know what the production constraints are.
Are rooms sometimes designed independently and connected later? Does gameplay take priority over geographical coherence? Do art changes or late level design changes create these inconsistencies?
Because as a player, sometimes I see a transition like this and immediately think "wait, that doesn't make sense." And it makes me genuinely curious about what happens during development and playtesting.
Is this something level designers actually care about a lot? Or am I putting way more importance on spatial coherence than most players do?