Presented at the Game Developers Conference 2024 Level Design Summit, this talk explores the practical challenges, failures, and lessons learned while building large-scale modular environments for a mobile battle royale. It highlights how early production decisions, such as over-reliance on rapid prototyping tools and delayed platform validation, led to critical performance issues, identity loss, and scalability limitations when transitioning from PC to mobile.
 

The presentation breaks down key pitfalls of hyper-modular workflows, including lack of visual identity, poor gameplay readability, and inconsistent environmental language. It then outlines a hybrid approach combining modular construction with traditional optimization and identity-driven design to achieve scalable, performant, and player-readable environments.
 

Through real production case studies from developing the Virlok map in Indus Battle Royale, the talk demonstrates how iterative validation, early performance benchmarking, and clear design pillars enabled the team to successfully build a 3.5 × 3.5 km mobile-optimized map. The session concludes with actionable takeaways for level designers on balancing modularity, performance, identity, and workflow efficiency when building large-scale map for mobile platform.