HEIGHT LAYERS
Discrete vertical levels in construction and simulation — Z-levels, floors, stacked layers — where each stratum is a full playable plane.
- SOLO-DEV COST HIGH
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN COLONY-SIM · CITY-BUILDER · BASE-BUILDING · SIM
Dwarf Fortress is the monument: dozens of Z-levels of dug fortress where gravity, fluids, and pathing all cross layers; RimWorld's single layer versus Dwarf Fortress's stack is a foundational design divergence; city builders like Cities: Skylines fake it with terrain heights and underground layers (metro, pipes); and Prison Architect-likes eventually add floors as their most-demanded feature. Designers add height layers to multiply buildable space without expanding the map footprint and to enable genuinely three-dimensional systems — drainage flowing down, towers with basements, mining as descent into danger. The cost is interface: every Z-level system fights the same war of showing one slice at a time while play spans many, and most of the design work is view modes, cutaways, and cross-layer indicators. Key decisions: how many layers (a few floors is manageable; unbounded depth is Dwarf Fortress-grade complexity), which systems cross layers (fluids, temperature, pathing, combat), and how the player navigates and reads vertical relationships at a glance. Pitfall: layers the interface can't make legible — if players can't quickly answer 'what's directly below this room', vertical building becomes bookkeeping-by-memory and most players retreat to building flat.
SEEN IN
- DWARF FORTRESS
- PRISON ARCHITECT
- CITIES: SKYLINES