PAC | JWilliams Design

"Avoid your former crewmates and repair your ship enough to make an escape back to civilization. Be quick, be aware, but most of all, be fearless."

Engine : Unreal Engine 5.2 with Blueprints

Role: Solo Designer and Developer

Time: June 2023 - July 2023

Overview

PAC is a survival-horror game with objective-based elements the player must complete in order to progress.

Stranded on a derelict space ship, the player wakes to find much of the ship's critical systems nonfunctional. The player must navigate through tight, maze-like hallways that are infested with the vengeful spirits of their former crewmates in order to reach the objectives. The only deterrent to the ghosts the player has at their disposal is the SAPR. Powered by small, latent pockets of gamma radiation, when fully charged the SAPR interferes with the spirits' atomic makeup, rendering them dormant for a short time.

The only escape is to complete the objectives in order to open the corridor that leads to the next level.

Inspiration

PAC was inspired largely by accident. While browsing random game images, I came across the image to the left. This got the wheels spinning and made for some intriguing questions.

Could this be a potential story for PAC-MAN?

Is this what designer Toru Iwatani envisioned when he first conceived the game?

The actual answer to both questions is a resounding no, however they make for some good thinking exercises.

Still, both are more than possible. While cartoony in visual design, a strong argument is made for PAC-MAN actually being a survival-horror game locked behind the technology of the time. The black background with blue lines indicates a dark area, ghost sprites were used for antagonists rather than something less frightening, and the longer the player survives, the more likely they will complete the level.

So, the quest to bring PAC-MAN into the 21st century was started...

Design Process

The design of PAC centered mostly on a few key points:

Retain the original's color palette
Translate the 2D, top-down perspective to a third-person viewpoint while giving the player a reasonable means of navigation
Update the "Power Pellet" mechanic to something similar yet fitting of the new story and setting we've established.

The color palette was undoubtedly the easiest of the pillars to achieve.

Anything benefiting the player in the level was a muted yellow tint. This included gamma pickups and the effect triggered when the SAPR was used, as well as the lighting
The player character also took a bright yellow color, with a bulbous and round character model reminiscent of our original PAC-MAN hero
The ghosts consisted of zombie character models, with new materials that have an emissive yet translucent effect with colors that match the originals, with the exception of green rather than orange. An orange tint, mixed with lighting on the level, made the ghost appear too closely to its red counterpart.

Converting the original top down view to a 3rd person perspective proved slightly more challenging.

An over the shoulder camera was used on the player character to keep the character model on the screen, rather than hiding it behind a first person view. The free rotate on the camera also allowed the player to check around corners and keep an eye out while performing objectives.
Navigation of a maze this size is quite difficult without visual cues. Ultimately, a waypoint system was used to indicate which direction of travel the player should take, but did not explicitly map out a route to the next objective.
The decision to use indicators on the ghosts was a controversial one. In the end, I decided to incorporate them for the simple fact that while playing the original PAC-MAN, the player can always see the ghosts and their direction of travel. This method pays homage to that while not revealing too much information, such as distance from the player. The indicators are also shaped like the original ghosts for some throwback flavor.

The SAPR mechanic was conceived in place of a Power Pellet.

Rather than "scare" the ghosts and make them vulnerable, just stopping their movement and rendering them idle felt like it added to the suspense of the level, knowing they can reactivate and sense the player at any time.
Making the SAPR chargeable via gamma pickups and an on demand effect gave the player various strategies in it's use.
- Players can activate the SAPR before activating an objective to ensure they don't get caught while waiting
- Players can use the SAPR for easier travel throughout the level
- The SAPR cancels the chase mechanic the ghosts use after seeing the player
The SAPR proved a great mechanic to include gamma pickups, which essentially replicates the pellets from the original PAC-MAN

Level design in PAC-MAN largely consisted of two rules: no dead ends, and the layout was mostly symmetrical. The end result I was looking for was a level that could have been in the classic game, just with the walls extruded upward.

An online PAC-MAN level generator was used to quickly create a layout
Hallways were purposely kept narrow to constrain the player. One reason was to prevent the player from dodging a ghost and going around it, the other to add a slight sense of claustrophobia.
The wall textures used varied based on their location. The exterior walls along the edge of the level have a different texture applied than interior walls. This gives the player some sort of positional awareness
Lighting is placed at intersections to give that “emergency power” feel. Volumetric atmospheric fog was also dialed up a bit to induce a haze.
Ghosts interact with lights, turning them off and on as they pass by. This was originally introduced to highlight their emissive appearance, but was later adjusted to lend to the unsettling environment
“Corpses” colored to each ghost were placed in the level for flavor. These made sense as a spawn point for the ghosts as well.

Having the ghosts patrol in a seemingly random fashion was simple to accomplish with the 3rd person view and multiple walls blocking the players sight. However, creating a method of pathing for each ghost required a little more thought.

A main concern I wanted to avoid was the ghosts clumping up in one area of the map due to bad luck in random location selections. To counter this, each ghost has their own method of choosing their destination.
The blue ghost is our objective hunter. He picks a random objective from an array and moves to that location. His purpose is to cross paths with the player since they have the same destinations.
The red ghost operates much the same as the blue ghost, however instead of objective locations, they pull a random actor from an array of location actors specifically placed in the level at key points.
The green and purple ghosts are the wild cards. Rather than pull a random yet predetermined location, they pick a random point within a 3000 unit radius to move.
These 4 methods combined offer enough breadth to cover the level and also ensure player interaction

By the end of the project, I definitely could see some potential in carrying some ideas forward. It also stands as a testament that a designer does not need to reinvent the wheel to create something that feels new and fresh.

Ways to expand on the game:

Multiplayer - Players take the role of the ghosts?
Classic mode - Rather than objectives, collect all the gamma pickups in the level to continue
Ghost mode - Player takes the role of the ghost(s) and chases an AI powered PAC