Pong Challenge: zGames developers diary

Hello everyone!

We would like to share our thoughts about our participation in Atari's Pong Developer Challenge.

We decided to enter this contest because Atari and Pong are two classic icons in the gaming world, so we wanted to try and recreate a classic. It’s a real challenge to redesign it in a way that is suitable for a wide audience and yet interesting. It's hard not to overcomplicate things too much and at the same time create something new based on this mechanic.

So from the very beggining we faced the hard decision of how to redesign the original Pong game. Should it be a totally new experience based on the pong game? Or should we create a pong game that everybody is familiar with, so people will look at it and say, “yeah, that’s Pong but it's a new Pong”! Eventually, we decided to recreate a Pong experience that is definitely familiar to everyone, but has some modern features.

So we created Pong World to be casual, cheerful and colorful -- yet familiar.

It has bright art with particles. The paddles became personalized and animated: we turned them into creatures that can be cute, funny or angry. A player can upgrade paddles, and it's not just a visual upgrade. Evolved paddles can grow in size, speed up the ball, or call more bonuses. So it actually influences the gameplay. Also, there are a lot of new twists in the gameplay. Every level provides some additional abilities called "level impacts," like locking a ball on your opponent's side or triggering mists to block his view. One the main features that makes the game fun is the extreme spin that you can add to the ball so it moves along curved paths (exaggerated curves).

Splash screen:

Main menu:

Paddles with different mood:

Customize your paddle:

Different levels (Jungle, Cathedral, Boulevard and Moon) ATTENTION: these are only development screenshots, some buttons are missing here:

The time frame of the contest is really short, and a 2-month limit is very challenging. But we put in a lot of effort, and so far it has paid off, as we are in the list of finalists. And we feel very proud of our accomplishment.

As for our competitors, we were thrilled to see such a great number of original ideas and approaches in their games. However, in our opinion not all of the most innovative ideas made it to the final. Perhaps they weren't able to cope with the tight deadlines.

Check out our trailer:

So if you like our concept and approach to Pong, you can express it through your vote for Pong World!

And, as American politicians say, “Vote early, vote often”!