This week I learned a new concept of level design that stemmed from designing around player movement: Allowances. When a player experiences a game, they are constantly searching for new paths to explore. However, most gamers and developers know that games need boundaries to help with performance or to properly facilitate the thematic vision of the level. Here's where the four levels of allowances come in: affordance, reward, risk, and denial.  Affordances are areas where the player has an opportunity to explore and usually are a stepping stone to one of the other three allowances. These are usually pre-cursor zones where players have relatively free movement stopped only by risk and denial zones. Risks are areas where the player must take a 'leap of faith' to uncover the next stage or a secret zone. Usually outlined by a hazard that the player must overcome and interspersed with denial zones. Denials are used to set boundaries for the player as well as providing a challenge in risk zone. Players usually avoid denial zones or can use them to pinpoint which parts of the risk zones are navigable to get to the final zone: the reward. Rewards zones are plain and simple: an goal area that the player must work to get to. If these areas are laid out correctly, the player will feel like they are learning the level