3. How does a game’s genre affect the way its levels and environments are designed? Choose one level from three different games—each from a distinct primary genre—and compare how these levels are designed with regard to setting, goals, puzzles, and risk–reward system.

Plants vs. Zombies (2009, PC) Tower defence

PvZ level 1-4
Goal: defeat zombies
Setting: front lawn outside your house.
Risk & reward: Having enough sunflowers to get sun which works as money to pay for plants. Having too many Sunflowers however will take up room and leave less space to put offence plants. You need a good balance of Sunflowers and Offence plants to keep your house and lawn safe.
Having too many Offence plants will leave less room for sunflowers and thus making it harder to get sun and more plants.

Portal (2007, PC) puzzle/platformer

Portal test room 18
Goal: finish the test chamber
Setting: inside a run down test laboratory.
Risk & reward:  The risk in this game/level is putting yourself into dangerous places to get results. Such as there is a lot of risk when jumping into portals but the reward is getting to the place you want to be.
You need to take risky jumps or walk past turrets to complete the level. But you cannot take too much of a risk or you will fall into the acid or the turrets will kill you.


Pokemon Silver (2000, GBC) role play

Pokemon Silver Ecruteak City
Goal: Become the best Pokemon trainer. But in this particular picture, beat the ghost gym leader.
Setting: Just outside the ghost gym in Ecruteak City.
Risk & Reward: Risk and reward in Pokemon is the choice of which Pokemon you want to train. You can catch and train whatever Pokemon you want. If you decide to only train fire type you will have the reward of always being strong against Grass and Ice type of Pokemon, however you must take the risk when fighting water types.





The three games that I have chosen are hard to compare. They are all so different. The goal in PvZ is to defend, the goal in Portal is to complete, and the goal in Pokemon is to become the very best. Pokemon and PvZ are similar in that it's really up to the choices you make as to whether you will succeed. Portal and PvZ both are very strategic games, you need to think carefully about what you do before you act.
Pokemon and Portal both have a set storyline that you follow. To an extent you can stray from the storyline slightly and fined hidden extras, but there is a set order you need to do most of the game in. The games all have some similarities but overall are very different games so therefore are very difficult to compare.