World Building

Making a game is not just about the visuals or game mechanics. It involves a lot of world building thoughts. How does the place, where the game is placed, look like? Which creatures or intelligent species are living in this world? What is the setting (level of conflict) and which challenges do our protagonists face?

Instead of writing a whole book about the world and story of the game, Project Pangea is developed as we progress in the development process, adding colorful characters, stories and background information to the world.

Project Pangea is inspired by the „Silurian Hypothesis“, developed by two NASA scientists (read article here). This hypothesis basically says that it would be impossible to detect if an ancient industrial civilization had existed on earth millions of years ago.Our game takes place at the end of the Permian period about 260 million years ago. A highly sophisticated civilization is at the peak of its development, with advanced technologies and megacities. Although we try to be as close to scientific findings on the flora and fauna of that time, we introduce some creative freedom in the design of the world we are building.More details on the different aspects of the world are presented below. This is all work in progress, and we will further develop the overall setting of the game, as we move forward. If you have any cool ideas, feel free to share them with us. This way you can make the game a little bit your own creation.

The world of pangea

Geography
We place the events of the story at about 260 million years in the past, long before there were dinosaurs. We are at the end of the Permian period, a few thousand years before the great extinction of (almost) all life on Earth – called „The Great Dying“, In the blink of geologic time – just 100,000 years – the majority of living species on the planet were wiped out.  Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of marine species and more than 70 percent of land animals have become extinct. Plants were just as badly affected as animal species.
 
Earth‘s landmass consists of a huge supercontinent „Pangea“ surrounded by “Panthalassa” – The Universal Sea. Pangea divides into two subcontinents, Laurasia to the north, and Gondwana to the south, separated by a massive mountain range, the Central Pangean Mountains, comparable to today‘s Himalayas. Due to the size of the continent, there are quite diverse vegetation zones: Lush tropical landscapes with huge conifer forests in the peripheral areas and vast deserts in the central regions of the continent.
Global temperatures are several degrees above our current level, which means there is almost no ice – only the higher mountain peaks are covered by snow and ice.
Characters

Our main characters in the game belong to a humanoid species. They are very human-like, but differ from humans in their physiology. They have multicolored skin, that can change the appearance much like a chameleon. By changing the color they can adapt to their environment, signal danger or just simply show off their beautiful skin. On the head they have two small antennas, which enhance their perception.

Some people possess superior capabilities, which depend on the social class they belong to. Scientists have discovered old knowledge about reactivating some quite useful pseudogenes. Some of the pseudogenes transform the antennas so they can send out certain frequencies that paralyze others in a certain radius. Others develop a slightly different body chemistry. This has led to the development of superior weapon systems and vehicle controls that can only be activated and controlled by the ruling class.

The knowledge about the pseudogenes comes from a lost civilizations, whose ruins can be found all over Pangea.

Animals

The world of Pangea is beaming with life. Strange creatures populate the forests and deserts. Synapsids and sauropsids dominate the scene. From time to time you can also see enormous insects: Dragonflies the size of a seagull and 2 meter long centepedes. The whole fauna would seem to us more like an alien planet, than Earth. Life as we know it today did not exist yet.

Large predators, such as the Dimetrodon or the Kamagorgon present a real danger to the poor soul that dares to wander the wilderness alone.

Image by © 2013 – 2021 DiBgd

Language

The language in our game is going to be English. Sure, it’s not quite realistic, given that the human species doesn’t even exist yet. But who wants to read subtitles all the time in order to understand what’s going on. 😉

However, we use some hieroglyph-ish type of writing, used by the humanoid species (artwork by SergeyBitos):

Artwork by SergeyBitos

Technology

The technology is based on our time, but there are technological developments that differ from ours, e.g. anti-gravity technology (suits, building technology, flying machines), the use of geopolymers (technology for melting and casting stones like basalt, marble or granite), laser technology etc.