Plasma Pong
Acknowledgements
Steve Taylor for the opportunity to help him on such a cool project.
Press Coverage
Washington Post
WIRED Magazine
PCWorld
CNET
MTV
IndieGames.com
The Dallas Morning News
Today's News Herald
Broke My Controller
Gamasutra
Suite101
FunMotion
Firing Squad
The Hollywood Reporter
RedFerret
GamesCastLive
Gameplay Not Just Graphics
Wikipedia
Project Awards
Best Indie Game - WIRED Magazine 2007
4.5 out of 5 - CNET
4 out of 5 - PCWorld
8 out of 10 - Softonic
4 out of 5 - FunMotion
“Plasma graphics so weird and beautiful they can cause hallucinogenic states.”
- WIRED Magazine
Plasma Pong is a clone of Pong, in which two players control a paddle each, at either side of the screen, volleying a ball between them. The environment is a fluid-like plasma which can be pushed and sucked with the paddles.
There are three game modes in Plasma Pong. In single player, the player combats a progressively smarter AI in a fluid environment where the fluid moves faster and faster, affecting the ball more and more. Multiplayer is little different, with two players typically sharing a single keyboard to play against each other. The sandbox mode, however, gives the player near total access to color, particle, and fluid motion effects, allowing them to simply play around with the game’s fluid dynamics engine and see what interesting motions they can create.
Plasma Pong gameplay.
What I did
Plasma Pong was created by my friend Steve Taylor for his senior project at George Mason University. One night at the Auld Shebeen, a great Irish pub in the DC area, I convinced Steve that the Mac needed Plasma Pong. He agreed and in late August 2006, he brought over the source code. A few late nights and many pizzas later, Plasma Pong, v1.3b, was released for the Mac OS X 10.4.
Plasma Pong has since been discontinued at the legal request of Atari, Inc.