JETPACK PENGUIN

GAME INFO

CONTRIBUTIONS

DESIGN GOALS

Create a puzzle platformer that tries to makes the most of all the player mechanics and interactables.

Create a fun linear level based platformer that mixes puzzles with fun platforming challenges.

PLAYER MOVEMENT

As a 3D platforming it was imperative that the movement mechanics we provided were both naturally fun to control but were also intuitive to understand.
The game centered around the concept of a penguin with a Jetpack so naturally we had the fun idea of allowing the player to slide on their stomach and using gravity to pick up speed. This could be combined with the jetpack to give the player a forward boost for gaining momentum.
The jetpack also allowed the player to hover and manipulate their jumps in the air for precision platforming and gaining extra height.
Overall this wide suite of movement options gave us a lot of different fun tools that we could use for creating obstacles and fun encounters with the level design.

PUZZLE MECHANICS

Being a game that takes place in an icy setting we immediately began playing around with the idea of being able to freeze water and enemies. To help aid with this we created a snowball that the player could aim and throw while also allowing the fumes that come out of the jetpack to freeze things as well.
From there we began creating specific interactables that players could interact with and freeze. We created waterfalls that could be frozen and used for wall jumping and allowed the player to pick up frozen enemies to use as platforms and weights for pressure plate puzzles.

LEVEL DESIGN

To start we created a massive hub area to create a playground for the players to begin experimenting with the different mechanics to hopefully create an organic space for players to get comfortable with the controls. This space was filled different nooks and crannies to give the player incentives to explore and even included portals to the 3 different levels.
The process for creating the levels required a lot of iteration and thought behind what mechanics we wanted to teach the player and when. Naturally the process would start with paper-maps before eventually moving to grey-boxing. From there it would require a lot of playtesting from myself and peers to make sure the obstacles felt fair and ramped up at an appropriate rate.

CONCLUSION

Overall this was a very fun and simple light-hearted project that allowed me to practice game and level design on such a tried and true classic genre. So many of the mechanics came together in such a natural and fluent way and I was really proud of the project created by me and my team. We had a really talented team of student developers and I feel like everyone had a good understanding of the game we were creating.

Michael Benavides