Yes, it's another Pac-Man clone. But a pretty cool one, I think.
This actually started development in 2020, but I never finished it, until now. If I were to make it again from scratch, I would probably do some things very differently, but I think the end result is nonetheless pretty good.
I'm especially happy with how the game looks. I used a lot of palette swapping in this game because I wanted to have that "neon" look from Pac-Man Championship Edition (my personal favourite). I also added some pseudo-3D effects, particles and level transition effects to make it look more interesting. I tried to make sure that the movement feels as good as possible, and I think I succeeded pretty well.
This game plays close to traditional Pac-Man, but with some key differences. While the ghosts behave similarly to the original, they do not start from the middle but instead they have their own corners. This game also has two different mazes (alternating) and you have the ability to jump over ghosts (but not walls!) three times per level (do this with X button). There's also a time limit, although it's not very strict until later levels. Levels get harder the further you get, so expect ghosts to move faster and power pellets to run out faster.
That's about it. I'd gladly hear some feedback, so feel free to share!
Is the grazing / particles when you scrape against the maze some sort of hidden mechanic or just a visual effect?
@timeandspace Those sparks are just a visual effect. It's something that they did in Pac-Man Championship Edition as well, and I think it looks cool.
Anyway, pressing towards the wall does not slow you down.
I noticed when you eat the Power Pellet that it does not cause the ghosts to backpedal like they do in the original. You could do this to make it even more challenging, @ville111.
Also in the original when you hit a ghost you hear a GULP sound and everything freezes for a moment giving you a brief second to think about what to do next.
@dw817 Oh yeah. Right now the ghosts enter the 'scatter' phase when you eat the power pellet, so they will move in random directions. But yeah, I suppose it would make sense for them to try and escape.
I agree that some SFX work and small pauses could make the game feel a lot better. I might do some small updates to it later.
I can’t play this
There’s something wrong with the code for some reason
I'm getting a syntax error on boot, any chance you could fix it?
@pixelperfect @Emalan-P
Seems like one of the latest updates to PICO-8 broke this game. I'll take a look at some point.
@pixelperfect Sorry it took this long, but I finally found the time to fix this issue. I don't even know what changed under the hood of PICO-8 to break my game (something related to goto, based on the error), but I was able to fix the issue.
[Please log in to post a comment]
