Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

Clever, but needs better AI

This is an ingenious inversion of the idea of Pacman. I like the music, and the graphics are excellent. Just one thing really let it down for me: the ghosts act as though they are lobotomised when not being controlled.

In normal Pacman, the biggest problem (for the player) is that the ghosts appear to be fiendishly smart; in fact, in many versions the ghosts have individual AIs. However, in this game the ghosts seem to select directions at random, and wouldn't give chase even if Pacman was directly in front of them; controlling them was frustrating, since they would often wander off as soon as you selected another ghost to control. (At one point, I even started to wonder if they were carefully programmed to avoid Pacman wherever possible!)

Make the AI just a little smarter, at least for the first few levels, and the game would be much more fun. Aside from that, I love the concept and everything else was spot on-enough that I would feel bad for giving you a score based on gameplay alone.

Cool, but a few flaws.

Well, as other people have said, the idea is great, but the playability is very frustrating. I remember in the original pacman, the ghosts ran way faster. In this version, you practically run slower, and there's no way in hell that you can catch him with one ghost, so basically you lose if you're down to one ghost. Also, the AI pacman are annoying and they're practically no better help than some blind guy playing as a second ghost. It would be neat however if you made it to where a second person can play, and the pacman runs way faster, so it would still be a challenge.

Indeed, big A.I. issues

The game itself is a fantastic concept. The graphics are top notch, the music is a pleasure to listen to, and you can't go wrong with original game sounds.
Unfortunately the current ghost A.I. makes it more of a chore than enjoyment. Putting aside their apparent confusion of what they are doing in a maze, it was very difficult to give them a purpose that they stick to. I quite often had Pacman cornered only to spend several minutes switching between the two ghosts to keep them going in the direction I wanted them to go.
In addition, the ghosts traveled much slower than Pacman, in complete contrast to the original game. Their speed was their primary advantage over Pacman, which is very important considering you implemented power pills.

My suggestion is that you try an experiment with the ghosts. Instead of them immediately taking a random path as soon as the player switches away, have them continue in the direction the player had them going until they hit a wall...and then let the A.I. take over again.
Good luck with this. I'm looking forward to paying for it some day. ;)

I agree with Kamikazetomato....

It was a great idea but your ghosts are mentaiy retarted. They're just hitting the walls and going back and forth. The only time they do somthing other than that is when their running from pac-man. its a good idea but well....the playability sucks

Great idea, terrible game

I love the idea of this game. The graphics are good enough, the programming is satisfactory, the works.

My problem is that you can only control one at a time and the AI is dumb as a rock for the ghosts. It's impossible to get Pac Man with one guy, but I've only ever been able to corner him once. I get that it's an attempt at difficulty but the entire thing is luck, off whether or not the AI of the guy you just set up goes nuts and runs away while you get the next guy in for the kill.

It felt less like a game and more like an annoying task. That's never good. But the idea is brilliant. Maybe making it so you can use 'W, A, S, D" along with up, down, left, right so at least you have a shot at catching Pac Man based on your own actions. It'd be challenging for the duality, but I'd rather have something challenge my finger coordination than my sheer dumb luck any day of the week.