Pango is a third-person skill-based platformer in which you play as Pango, an AI android made by archaeologists sent to an undiscovered temple to learn about the old civilization. Roll through winding pathways and jump over crumbling pillars as you collect ancient relics and uncover the secrets of an unknown civilization. Will you discover all the hidden secrets?
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You can play the game here
Pango is a platformer created as a group game project during my exchange to Breda University of Applied Sciences. We delivered a benchmark level with 5 distinct sections, based around 4 step level design, two of which I played leading roles in.
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Platform PC
Genre 3D Platformer
Engine Unreal
Role Level Designer
Team Size 17
Responsibility 2 of the 5 level sections
Project Output 1 fully setdressed level
Development Time 10 weeks
Completed June 2023
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Key outcomes:
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Level design - working with a physics-based movement system to create fast-paced platforming. Laying out preproduction and platforming for the prototype.
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Example: twist level section
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Playtesting - conducting playtests across multiple iterations
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Worldbuilding - creating the background world and narrative for the game
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Example: the history on the collectable tablets
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​Presenting Pango during Game Day at Breda
Level Design: Twist
Twist Iteration
My role within the level design team was to create the Twist section. Because the Twist revolves around the player approaching the mechanics of the level in a different way, I began with an experimentation on complete mechanic reversals. For example, before, bounce pads would help the player reach higher locations, now they launched the player into spikes. With this hard reversal as a base, I iterated to soften my changes into a less black & white role reversal, instead aiming for the player's choices to be brought about from informed decisions about the cause and effect of their actions.
Level Design: Onboarding
My secondary task was to create the Onboarding for the start of the game. Onboarding in notoriously challenging to design, something I quickly found out. The basic actions we wanted to the player to learn from the Onboarding was walking, jumping, ground pound, and roll. While walking and jumping were simple to teach the player, getting them to understand the functionality of the ground pound was difficult. We initially agreed to exclude the bounce pad from the Onboarding section, wanting to keep it for the introduction. I struggled to find a solution to teaching the player the ground pound without the bounce pad, and in the end when I handed off my work to another level designer to finalize, the bounce pad was added.
Onboarding Iteration
Level Design: Prototype
The initial idea was to create a gym type level where the player could tackle the ascent to the top from many directions, each path using a different skill. After playtesting, I corrected some of the routing and lengthened the three routes. The challenges were more linear with more space to breathe so the player wasn’t interrupted with decisions during their flowstate.
The philosophy with each route was to utilize a different ability. For example, one route used walking for a more tight and vertical path compared to an other which used rolling for a long and fast section. I find this prototype room quite constricting and hope to improve my level design with the game demo I will be producing in the following weeks.
Node Graphs
My primary role in Pango was level design. Along with the other two level designers, we agreed to use the four step level design process Nintendo utilizes in their level design. To plan out these four steps, I created an initial node graph to lay out each gameplay feature we wanted to showcase in our level design. This node graph became a instrumental resource for the level design team, as it allowed for clear communication between the level designers on how the level should play along with the art team on how the level should look.
The first node graph I created, used as a base for later iterations.
An expanded version of the base node graph, expanding each section into more specific nodes.
A condensed version which was used to scale down due to scope.
The first node graph I created, used as a base for later iterations.
This node graph lays out the primary sections the level designers would create, fit into the four step level design process. We distributed the sections so that each level designer had one, with the Conclusion to be left until later. My portion was the Twist section.
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Along the process of designing these sections, we found the need to refine the node graph to fit our evolving idea for the overall level as well as the scope we were constrained to. The first iteration on the node graph expanded the sections with more detailed nodes, before the second iteration condensed each section into as little nodes as possible.