Devlog #3 ~ Level Design - Points of Orientation

Because of the story I needed to create a 19th century city. In order to reduce effort I decided that it should not be possible to enter houses, which makes sense because the people barricaded up their houses to be safe. Given that I wanted to create an exploring horror game, the world should be interesting and worth exploring. A simple forest is not very exciting when you face trees 90% of the whole time. Here I want to interpose two concepts which I call "point of interest" and "point of orientation". In my humble opinion every level design should have at least a couple of these. A point of interest is a part of a level which is interesting to the player for one or more of the following reasons: he can receive something which helps him, which makes other parts of a level accessible or where he receives more informations about the story etc. Examples may be levers to open doors, loot, questitems, bosses and so on. A point of orientation is something which simply is remarkable that the player can remember where he is and where he came from.