Game Designer|| Level Designer || Environment Artist
Pac-man and the Ghostly Adventures 2
Game Designer || Vicious Cycle Software
Pac-man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 is a single player action platformer based on the Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures TV series. In the game, players once again take on the role of Pac-Man as he chomps, belches, and platforms his way through a bunch of enemies and obstacles.
As a team we faced many challenges with this project, namely having such a small studio headcount and an even smaller timeline for a project of this scale. The entire game was made from concept to completion in a little under a year! Thanks to some early prototyping, we were able to hit the ground running however, and churned out almost 50 entire levels across five worlds!
We had 2 major goals for this project. One was to stay true to the source material, that being the TV show by the same name while also catering to old school Pacman fans, which was a challenge as the show and original game were stylistically very different. We managed to do so by including small nods, such as pipe puzzle mazes and hidden 2D arcade worlds into the levels as bonus objectives. The second goal was to create a platformer that felt mechanically tight and satisfying, and I think we managed to hit both of those high bars.
As a designer I was mostly responsible for the planning, layout, and polishing of levels. The process usually began with documentation before production would sign off on our level idea, and once approved we would lay the level out in-editor with the mechanics we had prepared ahead of time. If new mechanics were needed, we would provide detailed writeups to the programming teams and work with them until the mechanic felt right. After playtesting and continuing to iterate on everything from jump heights to enemy placement, we would then replace our designer tilesets with assets completed by the art teams.
In addition to level design, I was also chiefly responsible for designing and implementing the final boss fight against Betrayus, which was inspired by an episode of the TV show that showcased the villain's obsession with table tennis.
My work included:
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Designing 12 levels
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Concept & Documentation
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Layout & Implementation
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Encounter Design
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Iterate with Feedback
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Final Polish
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Designing Final Bossfight
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Concept & Documentation
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Arena Design & Implementation
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Iterate with Feedback
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Final Polish
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Manage Boss Team
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Enemy Design
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Individual Mechanics Design
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Assisted Art Teams when Able
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QA and Feedback for other designers
The game turned out fairly great considering the limitations our team had to work with, and the simple gameplay and ease of access made it a hit with the young kids who were the target audience. In terms of personal growth, this project taught me a ton about inter-discipline communication and time management.
Work Examples || Documents and Layouts
A few examples are linked below. Feel free to click on the images to take a closer look at some of the design documents I created to guide the implementation of a level and a boss fight. Additionally you can find a few links to a youtube playthrough of the game, where I have timestamped links to my specific levels. I do not know the streamer, but am thankful that he so thouroughly enjoyed our game!
3rd Party playthrough videos of all my levels!
Chapter 1: Pacopolis
"Gotta Bounce"
"Dribble & Freeze"
"Flip-Flop"
Chapter 2: Paclantis
"Viva Paclantis"
"Granite Grotto"
Chapter 3: Space
"Gravity Games"
"Magnetic North"
"Space Dock Swing"
Chapter 4: Prehistoric
"Geysers and Mammoths"
"Kong Berry Cliffs"
Chapter 5: Netherworld
"Icy Hot"
"The Lava Pits"
Final Boss: Betrayus