are there any interesting psychological tricks you've learned for level design? (baby example being "use lights to guide the player's attention")
A really interesting thing we learned very early on in Highland is that people always want to go up. It doesn't matter if they're coming from a peak and the most visible route to progress is to continue down, people want to see the sky and see their surroundings.
So, a lot of Highland design has thus kind of gravitated around finding ways to trick the player into ending up at the bottom of a valley (via music runs, paths, pitfalls or otherwise) to sort of refresh the space.
it's how we see the world from an adult's perspective
it's how we developed aircraft
it's how we flung ourselves out into the terrifying void of space to look back at our home
it's why our gaze hunts for ever more distant stars
inside all of us is still a determined toddler, eyes fixed heavenwards, arms outstretched, demanding "Uppies!"
It is not entirely the same urge and desire, but one can surely agree that they're close enough together to be thoroughly intertwined.
Going uppies... faster... now that's the goal.
this is, of course, why Chucksters were invented!