Building a simple Level

When building a level design in a game you have to have the Basic Elements which are
-Concept (consistency)
-Environment
-Beginng
-Ending
-Goal (the goal is always constant)
-Challenge to overcome (Between the player and the goal, immediately recognizable)
-Reward (progression is a reward in itself)
-Way of handling failure

if any of these elements are missing from a game than the level is incomplete. Games like tetris use all elements and also the Mario series.
At first, when reading, i thought story would be one of the basic elements, but in this Brynes article he says that story can enhance and give players information on what is expected to come in the game, but games like chess and sims don't have a story element to them.

Using Super Mario as an example, the concept is about 2 plumbers who travel across the world to save Princess Peach, with constant enemies.  The environment depends on the enemy and stage. In the Gameboy version of Super Mario, you had different stages ranging from under the sea,  inside a pyramid or floating just above sea.   I am ashamed to admit that was never able to get past the fifth stage on the gameboy, but i can get a rough idea of what happens, and the same with the beginnings. In all Mario series the Begining will always have the same connection as the others. The challenge is overcoming the enemies that the game throws at you,  whether by jumping on the grass hopper looking thing, jumping on turtles or  walking pixelated mushrooms. I think in the game it has many mini rewards, collecting the coins to gain an extra life, finding secret tunnels, and at the end of each stage, the player has the option to try to get to the higher exit to have the chance of gaining something extra. Finally the way to deal with failure, with Mario once you have lost all your lives, you cannot start from the last stage you died at. To compensate for that, when you  gain a special mushroom that lets you grow into a bigger Mario, when you get hit by an enemy, instead of dying, you just lose that certain ability.

Bryne says that the best type of gameplay mechanic is where no explanation is needed (in mario it is pretty obvious that collecting the star makes you invincible) with no explanation needed, it makes the player feel cleaver.

With these basic elements in your game, you have a perfectly working game, you can add other elements to it, like a story, or an uncertainty element to it, but as long as it has the foundations of the basic elements, the game will be a success.