Pong'nt

Controls:

P1: R (move up) / F (move down)

P2: Up arrow (move up) / Down arrow (move down)

THE GAME WILL LAUNCH IN FULLSCREEN BY DEFAULT (TO AVOID PAGE SCROLLING WITH THE P2 INPUTS)

WHY THIS VARIANT?

Having been instructed to create a variant of the famous Pong game using the Construct 3 engine, my first idea was to simply invert the mechanics. Instead of having to chase after the balls to send them back to the opponent's half the field: the players would have to avoid them at all cost, and hope that they would, after bouncing back toward their opponent, encounter and destroy them. The paddles being relatively small: it quickly became an obvious necessity to keep the balls within the play space and increase their numbers, for the game to have any kind of difficulty.

EMERGENT SOCIAL MECHANICS

Having played with, and watched, a multitude of people: I saw a variety of different personal goals and even cooperative game plans being created. Indeed, players naturally had the same goal: to have the other player be hit by the projectiles to gain points.

But, their personal field of possible actions was limited to avoiding the balls themselves, and so they both intended for the balls to not hit the "player". What stemmed from this was players being angry at their opponent not for avoiding the balls, but for actually being hit by them! They had become a cooperative force in the procedural increase of the game's difficulty.

FEEDBACK AS AN IMPEDING FORCE

Having quickly implemented all the necessary game mechanics, I set out to add feedback and gamefeel elements to the game. Firstly, it was necessary to add helpers so that the players would be able to better understand the trajectory of the projectiles, so I implemented decaying trails that followed each ball and looked elegantly similar without ever being confused for them.

After this, I added a multitude of simple and pleasant feedback effects on the balls' collision with the walls or the players. It was when I added the screenshake and wall bounce sound effect that the feedback started taking on a different role. After the number of balls on screen had become high enough, these effects would turn from pleasant guides to a veritable cacophony and quaking of the screen: which created an intense game state and sublimated the challenge that was brought by additional balls to dodge.

Check out the rest of my portfolio at: mgabbardo.com

Contact me at: m.gabbardo@gmail.com

Find me on Twitter/ X at: @GabbardoMarcel