Cocktail is egregiously unfair if eaten on accident, it becomes, by far, the most dangerous action in the game, much much worse than getting caught by a ghost. Players just leaping in to play expecting a fun game will get caught by it, since the only place its behavior is documented is in the “Paclopedia.” Please consider changing it to something less terrible.
My first game lasted three hours, and only ended, on Round 158, because I was getting sick of playing it. I think it should probably ramp up in difficulty a bit faster.
Two themes always left me groaning in annoyance, and both times it was from the graphics used. The tall grass theme can make it practically impossible to tell where the last dots are, and the similar jungle-ish theme has flowers in the maze wall graphics that make it less clear where the barriers are. They made the game rather less fun. Of course fun is in the eye of the beholder, but I feel like I should chime in that I didn’t like that element. Maybe others will agree with me, and combined our impressions will accrete into a snowball of change. Who knows.
I was disappointed that Trog didn’t appear in the one game I’ve had so far. How long does it take Trog to show up?
1. Not every item has to be good all the time. The cocktail is an item that is good under certain circumstances but not others. If you see a new item you haven't encountered before in the rotation, you can check the paclopedia from the pause menu to read what it does before you pick it up. This is a game that is meant to be played and replayed and so you will ideally learn things as you go along.
2. Difficulty balancing is one of those things I will have to continue working on as I improve the game. I think I'm making progress on that front, so stay tuned!
3. The tall grass obscures dots and items as part of its behavior, it's a gimmick specifically meant to be obtrusive. Even then, grass which is "concealing" items will be parted and darker. I can't speak on the flowers in Jungly Steps, I have never heard of anybody else struggling with that.
4. Trog is a playable character you can pick in the player options menu, not an enemy. Just press the button with Pac-Man on it and you can swap to him if you want.
My point about Cocktail isn’t that it’s a bad item, it’s that it’s an EXTREMELY bad item, in a superfast action game where you often have little time to react to, sometimes, over a dozen pursuers at once. As I said: it’s much more perilous to collect a Cocktail that to be caught by a ghost. I’ve picked it up accidentally, which is even easier to do since powerups rotate through items. And new players won’t even think to check the encyclopedia. I think my point stands.
I understand the obtrusive gimmick, I think it’s a little too obtrusive. I’ve stared at the board after losing a life and waiting for the next life to begin, unable to find the remaining dot in the short time available, or else confusing it with an untriggered boost panel or banana peel. (In one case, the dot was beneath or beside the peel?)
I’m not sure Jungly Steps was the level in question, if that’s based on the Pac-Mania map then I never had the problem in that game. I can only speak to my own experience. Others might not have it, but then again, it is a problem I have. To not mention it would negate my own perspective. I suggest that superfast maze games are best served when the layout can be easily and instantly perceived.
Anyway, no one says you have to abide by any of this, I’m not the final arbiter of game quality. I just hope my input is helpful.
this game is good fun. made it to round 163 but had it cut it there because of how the game was struggling to generate mazes. took 45-ish minutes to generate the maze by that point. still have yet to encounter.
oh yes, have encountered the rare duplicate of the 4 main ghosts, alongside intangible ghosts. looking forward to the 1.2 update
I've described this game to a friend as, full stop: "one of the best Pac-Man maze games you'll ever play". I don't intend to change that sentiment!
The gameplay is addicting and fun, and the way each maze theme has gimmicks to spice up the gameplay is great. I love that each maze is randomly generated, as it means you never play the same session twice, making every play unique and having the player adapt to new layouts on the fly.
Regardless, there are some features and balance changes I'd like to see in the 1.2 update.
I'll start with some of my personal issues, and potential balance changes:
I appereciate the inclusion of a failsafe for the collision issues of prior builds, but I wish there was a better method than resetting you to the center of the maze. In the really large mazes, that can be a huge detriment, as it can force you to slog all the way back to the portion of the maze you were on, and can sometimes even force you to pick up a power-up when you'd least want to (I've been reset onto a cocktail at least twice).
I'd like to see a bit more variety in what types of special ghosts can spawn in the standard maze types, especially in the later rounds. At some point the game just spams Luckies at you, so maybe a "first encounter" format for special ghosts would be good. If this is for balance reasons, though, I understand.
Late into the game (100+ rounds in) the mazes generated are obscenely wide, often to the point where the game can't fill in enough dots for them. This also has the side effect of making mazes take quite a while (almost 10 minutes!) to load. I think a size cap for mazes might need to be implemented to keep the concept there, but to not let it get out of control.
Now, for the feature requests. Do note that most of this is from Arrangement '96, sorry about that (lol):
More music for some of the level themes would be good, especially the Mappy and Galaga themes. "Casino House" from Mappy Arrangement, and "Galaxy Zone" from Galaga Arrangement '95 are some personal suggestions!
For Kinky's transformations, it'd be neat if each transformed ghost had a "tall ghost" sprite, like the tall ghost designs in Arrangement '96 (you could even reuse Inky's transformation design for the duplicating ghosts).
In that same breath, I'd like to see more of the transformations get implemented (Blinky's charge attack, Pinky's rabbit jump).
The "JUMP" panels (maybe even the staircase maze-type in general) would make a really great addition to mazes, especially in Arcade Mode's later rounds.
Lastly: It'd be really cool to have an "Arrange" mode (based on Arrangement '96) where you go through each maze theme in a world-based order, with a final-round boss and ending. Don't get me wrong, I love the endless format of Arcade Mode, but it's also just really satisfying to me to reach the end of an arcade game and see the credits roll, or even attempt 1-credit clears for them.
Regardless, I've been loving this game, and am looking forward to wait awaits in 1.2!
Itch is giving me trouble with editing the comment, so I'll explain what I mean about a "first encounter" format here: In this case, when a special ghost appears for the first time, it would appear in standard maze themes from then on for the rest of the run.
Hi! Made an account here just to address the banana nerf (for the record I love this game, I'm hopelessly addicted; especially if it involves dash panel clip farming lol):
In my opinion, the risk and reward nature inherent to choosing the banana in the rotation necessitates heavy punishment for failing to conquer and tame the banana. An item that has its identity firmly placed in friction should prioritize friction, especially if its an optional pickup. Truth be told I do think the game already leans slightly on the easy side; There's a lot of ways to bend the game on your knee if you make smart upgrade choices and eat a lot of ghosts early on. The banana offered a pretty strong way to incentivize risky plays and induce a higher level of difficulty on repeat playthroughs for those who want it (still available through routing your upgrades suboptimally (oops all lemons)), and so I believe nerfing the banana is a misstep. It truly feels so much better to make crazy banana plays when the risk of death is higher! Honestly, if it were up to me I'd make the banana even more brutal by increasing the stun time the longer you keep the banana going, as in punishing the player for getting close to clutching the banana but failing at the last second, and being just a slap on the wrist for simply grabbing it and hitting a wall right away; just my drop in the hat though :p
The biggest mazes are fun but a commitment to chew through once the game only spawns those kinds of mazes; my advice to people is invest in speed lategame (round 107+) and go for the mirror! It makes quickly dispatching the largest mazes much less of a hassle, and the downside of eating both power pellets at once has less consequence when you've already gotten so many upgrades.
Just wanna say thanks for making something as rad as this game, its truly a marvel seeing something like this made by just a couple fans, honestly one of my all time favorite pacman games now! My highest round is 137, and my highest score is 49773340.
PS. the grass level on the highest size maze is realllllyyy laggy xp
pls when 1.3 comes out make it so you can play with npc's in arcade mode and add a pac-man ce mode I want play with npc's in that mode too but ill be hear waiting
Been playing this quite a bit lately and I gotta say it's a fantastic Pac-Man fan game. It's nice to see a game focused on the Pac-Man Arrangement look and feel, but the random mazes, new ghosts, fruit powerups, and plethora of other gameplay elements really puts this game in a spot all its own. It feels endlessly replayable. Amazing job on this, I especially LOVE the pixel art, and I'm looking forward to any updates in the future!
Let's make things more interesting by making the life system similar to the original 1980 arcade version. (Just one life when you reach 10,000, and then no more bonus lives—that's it.)
Hello! I’ve been absolutely loving Pac-Man Forever, and since you’ve mentioned the idea of a version 1.2 in the page for your latest revision, I’d like to give my suggestions. That said, most of these are just aesthetic and cosmetic ideas rather than actual gameplay suggestions. It’s mostly to do with playable characters, but I also have some suggestions for maze themes, and other things.
For playable characters, my most wanted has to be “limbed” Pac-Man (the design seen in promo art and games like Pac-Man World.) This has always been my preferred look for Pac-Man, so it would definitely become a main for me. Maybe you could also do one for Ms. Pac-Man as well. On that note, retro skins for Ms. and even Jr. would be nice as well. Onto actual new characters, the inclusion of Pac-Ranger makes me feel other Pac-People NPCs would be nice inclusions, like Handy-Pac, Clie, Nova, and maybe even throw in some Ghostly Adventures characters like Cylindria and Spiral. Maybe Toc-Man as well if you don’t plan on making him an enemy. More classic Namco characters would also be nice to see, like Gil from Tower of Druaga, Galaxip from Galaxian, Solvalou from Xevious, Valkyrie, and maybe even relatively newer characters like Mr. Driller or The Prince from Katamari. But of all of these, Gil is a perfect fit. Another character I think would be cool albeit somewhat unorthodox is a playable ghost. Maybe the way their palette works could be a little different from the enemy ghosts to distinguish them more. As for who this ghost would be, I’d go with Orson. He’s pretty much the only major ghost from the series to not have a role already, and him being playable would fit his role as an ally in Pac-Man World 3. He also has a unique eye shape in World 1 and the Re-Pac games, so that’s another thing to help him stand apart from enemy ghosts. New color palettes would be nice, but something I would really love to see is custom color palettes. Even if it’s something that has to be made outside the game itself. On that note, custom characters would be another nice addition. That said, I totally understand if something like that is difficult to implement and outside of the scope of this project. Also, I think color palettes shouldn’t be limited to one player each during multiplayer. I understand it for Versus mode, since the Buddies take after the color of their player, but I don’t see any reason this limitation has to exist in Arcade mode. I mostly just want this so I can have normal yellow Pac-Man alongside normal yellow Ms. Pac-Man. Also Rally X Racer should be renamed to its canonical name: “My Car”
While playing as Ms. Pac-Man, I notice that the sound effects don’t change to the ones found in her home game. That’s totally fine, but it did give me an idea: Adding a third customization option with the characters and palettes: sound effects. There would be options to use the sound effects from different games, like Ms., Jr., Mania, Arrangement, etc. There could even be sound effect options for different Namco games to fit the Dig Dug or Galaga skins. This wouldn’t effect all sound effects like ones that don’t have an equivalent, but just the main ones like eating dots and fruits and ghosts, the ghost sirens, dying, and the start jingle (aside from level-specific ones)
As for maze themes, I think a must-have would be a spooky Halloween theme, since that tends to be a level trope for a lot of Pac-Man games. It could have music from World 1 & 2 as well as Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness. One that could be fairly easy to implement is a Ms. Pac-Man theme, basically an alternate version of the classic maze theme the game always starts with, just with different colors, the walls filled in, and maybe the checkerboard background could be polka dots or something. The music could also be Ms.-related songs like Cleopactra, and the Ms. Pac-Man room from Namco Museum Vol. 3. Other maze ideas I have are a carnival inspired by the Funhouse from Pac-Man World or Sweet Land from Pac ‘n Roll, a space station inspired by Pac-Man World’s space world and Pac-Attack PS1’s aesthetic, and a theme based on Tower of Druaga.
I think some of the existing maze themes could use some more music, mostly the ones that use only one song. The Block Town maze could use variants of the songs like Pac-Mania Room from Namco Museum Vol. 5, or the Pac & Pal remix from the DS version of Pac-Man Vs. The Mappy maze could use songs from Mappy Arrangement, Hopping Mappy, and the Mappy theme from Pac ‘n Jump. I think the Wild West theme should have Wild West 1 & 2 from Pac-Man: Adventures in Time because those songs SLAP. Lastly, this is very subjective, but I think the Tree Tops maze should use the original versions of the World 2 songs, either alongside or in place of their Re-Pac versions, as I feel they sound better. Again, very subjective, but regardless of which version you choose, I definitely feel the credit for the songs should go to the original composer, David Logan, rather than or alongside Masashi Sugiyama and Meiko Tamada, who just did the Re-Pac arrangements. Speaking of music, a “sound test” in the menu would be nice, maybe even allowing us to set any song as the menu music.
Finally, one of the only gameplay ideas I have is to add Miru as a “ghost” that can appear. She could work like she did in Pac & Pal, stealing Power Pellets and upgrade power-ups and bringing them to the ghost house where they disappear. Another idea is that since one of the clover’s random effects is to change your color palette, I think having another effect changing the player’s character would be fun. It could even replace the color change effect since you already get that from the mushroom. I also ask that if you end up adding another upgrade power-up that you make it the iconic pretzel from Ms. Pac-Man.
So that’s all the suggestions I’ve got. Sorry this ended up being so long, but I’ve just been having an absolute blast with this game and when that happens I just tend to get ideas for more things. Of course, I’m not expecting these suggestions to actually make it into the next update, and I’m more than satisfied with the game as it is now. You and everyone else on the dev team seriously did a fantastic job, this has become one of my favorite Pac-Man maze games on the same level of the all-time GOATs like Pac-Man Arrangement. This is the kind of Pac-Man I’ve been missing from the official maze games from far, far too long.
Had fun with this game, but I do find the point scaling to go through the roof if you mostly get point bonus eggs. I was able to out pace the game's difficulty and get 150 lives. It is truly "Forever".
I do find the "late game" mazes to feel way too big and time consuming, a part of me wishes there was a generation option to cap the size and get difficulty from something else.
Really fun. I got up to loop 3, round 123, thing is, the game kinda just starts to break down at loop 3. The mazes start to become so big that it takes a long time to generate them and i assume the mazes would eventually get so big it would just crash.
Not only that, but the big mazes are just kinda unfun. They don't even generate enough dots to fill the maze, there are probably too many power pellets honestly, and because the maze is so big most of the time your not dealing with any ghosts because there's still only one spawner, making the rounds easy.
At that point i probably could have gone on forever because i had 100+ lives and the rounds got so easy. It was only my greed that did me in because i accidentally grabbed the glass cannon power up, loss 100+ lives and got softlocked because i was so fast that moving would just have me clip though the wall and teleport back to spawn.
So uh i have some suggestions.
- Glass cannon should have a max of how many lives it can take, since going from 100 lives back to like 3 just feels bad.
- There really should be a speed cap so you don't get softlocked.
- Mazes should stop increasing in size around loop 3.
- Ghost should probably take a increasing number of lives after each loop, since it wasn't really skill that got me so many lives, i just got so many points because of the score powerup and ghosts that i kinda just outscaled the game.
- Every time i got the clover power up i got unlucky, I'm guessing this is a bug. But even if its not the chance for it to actually do something should be way higher.
Some other things.
- So i think the cheese power up only appears in the cheese maze? Or maybe its really rare, but given that mirror only last for one life it should probably be more common.
- Idk what's going on with some of the ghosts, i only found Kinky once during loop 2 on the gold maze and by that time there were too many ghosts to really see its effects. I also haven't even seen 4 other ghosts, i thought that maybe they may be for loop 2+ but well, nope. Idk about the ghosts i haven't seen but honestly Kinky should just be part of the normal pool of ghosts you can get.
- I think the Paclopedia should also show the maze types, it would help with appreciating the maze gimmicks since honestly some of the gimmicks are so subtle i can't really tell what they are.
I wager most of the ghosts you're missing are from VS. mode. I do believe the clover effect may be bugged, so expect another patch sometime soon. The cheese item should appear in other mazes after you collect it the first time in the cheese maze, though this may be another bug. There is a maximum maze size, and there are failsafes in place in the event that a maze can't generate properly. I'll continue to work on the balancing since I want the game to continue being fun even at high rounds like that. Thank you for all your feedback!
Hey there. I tested the game with an Atari controller for Player 1, Genesis controller for Player 2, and GameCube controller for Player 3. I'm glad that you listed the keyboard controls right on this Itch page. Taking a snapshot of them with my phone was really easy, and transferring the controls to JoyToKey was a success.
Being able to put the characters in "Key 1, Key 2, Key 3 mode" was extremely helpful. It was a little annoying that, even in key mode, the game still imposes Enter and Esc on various buttons. But overall, I was really pleased with the results. This is one of the better Pacman games for Windows.
It's not that I can't see controls - I can see them and also sense them, when they're imposed. Like, if I set Player 1 to Key1 mode, and then find out that some button will pause the game, I can tell that menu navigation controls are still being imposed, even though every character is in Key mode.
A lot of developers want to include keybinders in their games. I'm not a proponent of that, because every new keybinder is something I have to learn, and the more of them there are, the more likely I am to run into a frivolous shortcoming.
That being said, when Pacman games gradually get better on Itch, I'll acknowledge it, and that has indeed happened.
hey when using a controller if you select your character/colour, when pressing A button (The decline/go back button) you don't leave the colour screen and instead the colours stay on screen while you can navigate menus your not suppose to. Hope this is helpful!
-Fully randomizing which maps come up in arcade mode or such? It does get a lil tiring running through the same classic and block town before things start becoming fully random.
I think the first bug I mentioned has to do with the Pac-Dot speed boost the lemon gives you when combined with the speed boost from either arrows or banana peels
This game is EPIC! One thing though, I was playing with controller and when in game, I wasn't able to pause using the controller which may be a bug or on my end idk. But what IS a bug is when you play Arcade with controller then pause (using enter cause u cant pause with controller) and go back to menu, you loose the ability to select things on the menu using the controller (example: you can't select play, credits or exit with the controller). It would be le epic if this got fixed so I can FULLY play with thy epic controller. Apart from that though this is awesome!
Really love what you've put together for this! I have a question, do you have plans to add more Namco crossover stages? It'd be real neat to see some stuff lifted from Tower of Druaga or a playable Gilgamesh!
i got to level 100. icouldve gone higher , but itwas 2 am and my hands were Hurting. the big mazes, the amount of ghosts and how fast ur able 2 go makes this really insane .... it should be its own entire mode i think (with a timer like the CE games). only problem is it lags a lot in certain stages
other suggestions would b to have a custom music player (so i can listen to CE music and katamari music ingame..) ,and also Please fix diagonal inputs (i lost so many lives to inputs getting eaten from accidentally holding two keys at once
Not sure how this happened, but I got to round 104, and despite eating all of the pellets, the level won't finish. I have no choice but to force a game over.
Content-wise, I absolutely love it, the game is pure Pac-Man and the pixel art is fantastic, but I have issues regarding the game's resolution and scaling:
The game's minimum native internal resolution seems to be 216x228, depending on the aspect ratio set, but the Integer scaling mode absolutely does not scale by an integer, at least at 1080p; the highest integer that should be able to fit is 864x912, but the game displays in an oddball 755x1007 within the 1920x1080 container.
Narrowing the window to less than 512 pixels wide causes the game screen to disappear when integer scaling is set (even with the aspect ratio set to 3:4 or 4:3!), and while Fit allows the window to go narrower, the game is smaller than 240x320 so it's impossible to properly play the game on a CRT set to 240p (tate) at 3:4. This is a shame, cause I used a screenshot to see what it would look like and it's beautiful. Solving these issues would make all of us >1% of players very happy!
the game is really really cool and i Love it. it scratches my need for more pac-man arrangement-type gameplay and also the vague roguelike type gameplay is really nifty. also the art is top-notch i LOVE everything here. i have Some gripes but they're a little minor, if not sadly a bit long-worded:
- i literally Cannot distinguish the lime skincolor in the grass world from the grass itself. i rolled it with the mushroom and was just cursed to be Unable to see myself well at all for the next 3 rounds. my eyesight stinks
- somehow, someway, make the cameo enemies (pookas, roadsters, meowkies etc.) able to be dispatched, or maybe have them be stunned for longer? i've been caught in several situations where i kinda just get fucked over without any way to escape because i happen to get surrounded by them after eating a power pellet instead of the regular ghosts, and it kinda stinks u,wu
- for how impactful Glass Cannon is, it should REALLY have its own sprite. that shit is Crazy to just trigger on random
- please please please let me rebind my controls Please
- a way to save and quit runs? (like maybe every 10 rounds? i've found myself in multiple scenarios where i just have to Leave my pc and i can't continue a really good run. but i'd understand if you don't want to put that in)
also, not to come off nitpicky, but i've noticed there's a few typos, so i figure you'd probably want to know:
- in inky's paclopedia description, he's referred to as blinky once
- "when he stars to flash" in lucky's description
- in the spectral monster description, "syphon" should be "siphon"
The game works great for me, but a friend of mine said that he can't get the game to run at all. It shows an error message for him and then immediately closes on him. :( Any clue on what's happening there?
Any plans for online Coop me and my friends would love to play this together My girlfriend was also wondering if you plan to make a Mobile port of this
For online co-op, I suggest playing over parsec or a similar game-hosting platform. I have no experience in net-code nor the resources to host servers so as of right now online implementation is off the table. Mobile port is unlikely. Thank you for asking!
This is absolutely fantastic! Basically Arrangement 2!
Are there any plans for a CEDX or CE2 style game modes? i kinda would love to see that frantic gameplay style being combined with the Arrangement mechanics and power-ups
Even if not this is still the most fantastic Pac-Man fan game i have ever played!
I was thinking of making a fan game for that in the past, but if it doesn't get added officially I may figure out a way to make a mod for this game instead.
Well, while I was pretty content with the first version already, this 1.1 update blows that out of the water in every single way!
What a delightful Pac-Man experience. This is probably my favorite Pac-Man fan project ever now. The fact that it has a bunch of references to the whole franchise, with a lot of original stuff thrown in as well (the skins, the music, the level themes, heck, the Versus Mode!) makes it a real trip for a fan like me. It's so easy to get into as well.
I really have no real criticisms or any further comments, I just wanted to sing this game's praises for a bit!
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Cocktail is egregiously unfair if eaten on accident, it becomes, by far, the most dangerous action in the game, much much worse than getting caught by a ghost. Players just leaping in to play expecting a fun game will get caught by it, since the only place its behavior is documented is in the “Paclopedia.” Please consider changing it to something less terrible.
My first game lasted three hours, and only ended, on Round 158, because I was getting sick of playing it. I think it should probably ramp up in difficulty a bit faster.
Two themes always left me groaning in annoyance, and both times it was from the graphics used. The tall grass theme can make it practically impossible to tell where the last dots are, and the similar jungle-ish theme has flowers in the maze wall graphics that make it less clear where the barriers are. They made the game rather less fun. Of course fun is in the eye of the beholder, but I feel like I should chime in that I didn’t like that element. Maybe others will agree with me, and combined our impressions will accrete into a snowball of change. Who knows.
I was disappointed that Trog didn’t appear in the one game I’ve had so far. How long does it take Trog to show up?
1. Not every item has to be good all the time. The cocktail is an item that is good under certain circumstances but not others. If you see a new item you haven't encountered before in the rotation, you can check the paclopedia from the pause menu to read what it does before you pick it up. This is a game that is meant to be played and replayed and so you will ideally learn things as you go along.
2. Difficulty balancing is one of those things I will have to continue working on as I improve the game. I think I'm making progress on that front, so stay tuned!
3. The tall grass obscures dots and items as part of its behavior, it's a gimmick specifically meant to be obtrusive. Even then, grass which is "concealing" items will be parted and darker. I can't speak on the flowers in Jungly Steps, I have never heard of anybody else struggling with that.
4. Trog is a playable character you can pick in the player options menu, not an enemy. Just press the button with Pac-Man on it and you can swap to him if you want.
My point about Cocktail isn’t that it’s a bad item, it’s that it’s an EXTREMELY bad item, in a superfast action game where you often have little time to react to, sometimes, over a dozen pursuers at once. As I said: it’s much more perilous to collect a Cocktail that to be caught by a ghost. I’ve picked it up accidentally, which is even easier to do since powerups rotate through items. And new players won’t even think to check the encyclopedia. I think my point stands.
I understand the obtrusive gimmick, I think it’s a little too obtrusive. I’ve stared at the board after losing a life and waiting for the next life to begin, unable to find the remaining dot in the short time available, or else confusing it with an untriggered boost panel or banana peel. (In one case, the dot was beneath or beside the peel?)
I’m not sure Jungly Steps was the level in question, if that’s based on the Pac-Mania map then I never had the problem in that game. I can only speak to my own experience. Others might not have it, but then again, it is a problem I have. To not mention it would negate my own perspective. I suggest that superfast maze games are best served when the layout can be easily and instantly perceived.
Anyway, no one says you have to abide by any of this, I’m not the final arbiter of game quality. I just hope my input is helpful.
i hope you guys eventually add the ability to mod this game
this game is good fun. made it to round 163 but had it cut it there because of how the game was struggling to generate mazes. took 45-ish minutes to generate the maze by that point. still have yet to encounter.
oh yes, have encountered the rare duplicate of the 4 main ghosts, alongside intangible ghosts. looking forward to the 1.2 update
I've described this game to a friend as, full stop: "one of the best Pac-Man maze games you'll ever play". I don't intend to change that sentiment!
The gameplay is addicting and fun, and the way each maze theme has gimmicks to spice up the gameplay is great. I love that each maze is randomly generated, as it means you never play the same session twice, making every play unique and having the player adapt to new layouts on the fly.
Regardless, there are some features and balance changes I'd like to see in the 1.2 update.
I'll start with some of my personal issues, and potential balance changes:
I appereciate the inclusion of a failsafe for the collision issues of prior builds, but I wish there was a better method than resetting you to the center of the maze. In the really large mazes, that can be a huge detriment, as it can force you to slog all the way back to the portion of the maze you were on, and can sometimes even force you to pick up a power-up when you'd least want to (I've been reset onto a cocktail at least twice).
I'd like to see a bit more variety in what types of special ghosts can spawn in the standard maze types, especially in the later rounds. At some point the game just spams Luckies at you, so maybe a "first encounter" format for special ghosts would be good. If this is for balance reasons, though, I understand.
Late into the game (100+ rounds in) the mazes generated are obscenely wide, often to the point where the game can't fill in enough dots for them. This also has the side effect of making mazes take quite a while (almost 10 minutes!) to load. I think a size cap for mazes might need to be implemented to keep the concept there, but to not let it get out of control.
Now, for the feature requests. Do note that most of this is from Arrangement '96, sorry about that (lol):
More music for some of the level themes would be good, especially the Mappy and Galaga themes. "Casino House" from Mappy Arrangement, and "Galaxy Zone" from Galaga Arrangement '95 are some personal suggestions!
For Kinky's transformations, it'd be neat if each transformed ghost had a "tall ghost" sprite, like the tall ghost designs in Arrangement '96 (you could even reuse Inky's transformation design for the duplicating ghosts).
In that same breath, I'd like to see more of the transformations get implemented (Blinky's charge attack, Pinky's rabbit jump).
The "JUMP" panels (maybe even the staircase maze-type in general) would make a really great addition to mazes, especially in Arcade Mode's later rounds.
Lastly: It'd be really cool to have an "Arrange" mode (based on Arrangement '96) where you go through each maze theme in a world-based order, with a final-round boss and ending. Don't get me wrong, I love the endless format of Arcade Mode, but it's also just really satisfying to me to reach the end of an arcade game and see the credits roll, or even attempt 1-credit clears for them.
Regardless, I've been loving this game, and am looking forward to wait awaits in 1.2!
Itch is giving me trouble with editing the comment, so I'll explain what I mean about a "first encounter" format here: In this case, when a special ghost appears for the first time, it would appear in standard maze themes from then on for the rest of the run.
Hi! Made an account here just to address the banana nerf (for the record I love this game, I'm hopelessly addicted; especially if it involves dash panel clip farming lol):
In my opinion, the risk and reward nature inherent to choosing the banana in the rotation necessitates heavy punishment for failing to conquer and tame the banana. An item that has its identity firmly placed in friction should prioritize friction, especially if its an optional pickup. Truth be told I do think the game already leans slightly on the easy side; There's a lot of ways to bend the game on your knee if you make smart upgrade choices and eat a lot of ghosts early on. The banana offered a pretty strong way to incentivize risky plays and induce a higher level of difficulty on repeat playthroughs for those who want it (still available through routing your upgrades suboptimally (oops all lemons)), and so I believe nerfing the banana is a misstep. It truly feels so much better to make crazy banana plays when the risk of death is higher! Honestly, if it were up to me I'd make the banana even more brutal by increasing the stun time the longer you keep the banana going, as in punishing the player for getting close to clutching the banana but failing at the last second, and being just a slap on the wrist for simply grabbing it and hitting a wall right away; just my drop in the hat though :p
The biggest mazes are fun but a commitment to chew through once the game only spawns those kinds of mazes; my advice to people is invest in speed lategame (round 107+) and go for the mirror! It makes quickly dispatching the largest mazes much less of a hassle, and the downside of eating both power pellets at once has less consequence when you've already gotten so many upgrades.
Just wanna say thanks for making something as rad as this game, its truly a marvel seeing something like this made by just a couple fans, honestly one of my all time favorite pacman games now! My highest round is 137, and my highest score is 49773340.
PS. the grass level on the highest size maze is realllllyyy laggy xp
Finally somebody understands me... somebody gets the banana...
pls when 1.3 comes out make it so you can play with npc's in arcade mode and add a pac-man ce mode I want play
with npc's in that mode too but ill be hear waitingBeen playing this quite a bit lately and I gotta say it's a fantastic Pac-Man fan game. It's nice to see a game focused on the Pac-Man Arrangement look and feel, but the random mazes, new ghosts, fruit powerups, and plethora of other gameplay elements really puts this game in a spot all its own. It feels endlessly replayable. Amazing job on this, I especially LOVE the pixel art, and I'm looking forward to any updates in the future!
Let's make things more interesting by making the life system similar to the original 1980 arcade version. (Just one life when you reach 10,000, and then no more bonus lives—that's it.)
amazing game and improvements!
Hello! I’ve been absolutely loving Pac-Man Forever, and since you’ve mentioned the idea of a version 1.2 in the page for your latest revision, I’d like to give my suggestions. That said, most of these are just aesthetic and cosmetic ideas rather than actual gameplay suggestions. It’s mostly to do with playable characters, but I also have some suggestions for maze themes, and other things.
For playable characters, my most wanted has to be “limbed” Pac-Man (the design seen in promo art and games like Pac-Man World.) This has always been my preferred look for Pac-Man, so it would definitely become a main for me. Maybe you could also do one for Ms. Pac-Man as well. On that note, retro skins for Ms. and even Jr. would be nice as well. Onto actual new characters, the inclusion of Pac-Ranger makes me feel other Pac-People NPCs would be nice inclusions, like Handy-Pac, Clie, Nova, and maybe even throw in some Ghostly Adventures characters like Cylindria and Spiral. Maybe Toc-Man as well if you don’t plan on making him an enemy. More classic Namco characters would also be nice to see, like Gil from Tower of Druaga, Galaxip from Galaxian, Solvalou from Xevious, Valkyrie, and maybe even relatively newer characters like Mr. Driller or The Prince from Katamari. But of all of these, Gil is a perfect fit. Another character I think would be cool albeit somewhat unorthodox is a playable ghost. Maybe the way their palette works could be a little different from the enemy ghosts to distinguish them more. As for who this ghost would be, I’d go with Orson. He’s pretty much the only major ghost from the series to not have a role already, and him being playable would fit his role as an ally in Pac-Man World 3. He also has a unique eye shape in World 1 and the Re-Pac games, so that’s another thing to help him stand apart from enemy ghosts. New color palettes would be nice, but something I would really love to see is custom color palettes. Even if it’s something that has to be made outside the game itself. On that note, custom characters would be another nice addition. That said, I totally understand if something like that is difficult to implement and outside of the scope of this project. Also, I think color palettes shouldn’t be limited to one player each during multiplayer. I understand it for Versus mode, since the Buddies take after the color of their player, but I don’t see any reason this limitation has to exist in Arcade mode. I mostly just want this so I can have normal yellow Pac-Man alongside normal yellow Ms. Pac-Man. Also Rally X Racer should be renamed to its canonical name: “My Car”
While playing as Ms. Pac-Man, I notice that the sound effects don’t change to the ones found in her home game. That’s totally fine, but it did give me an idea: Adding a third customization option with the characters and palettes: sound effects. There would be options to use the sound effects from different games, like Ms., Jr., Mania, Arrangement, etc. There could even be sound effect options for different Namco games to fit the Dig Dug or Galaga skins. This wouldn’t effect all sound effects like ones that don’t have an equivalent, but just the main ones like eating dots and fruits and ghosts, the ghost sirens, dying, and the start jingle (aside from level-specific ones)
As for maze themes, I think a must-have would be a spooky Halloween theme, since that tends to be a level trope for a lot of Pac-Man games. It could have music from World 1 & 2 as well as Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness. One that could be fairly easy to implement is a Ms. Pac-Man theme, basically an alternate version of the classic maze theme the game always starts with, just with different colors, the walls filled in, and maybe the checkerboard background could be polka dots or something. The music could also be Ms.-related songs like Cleopactra, and the Ms. Pac-Man room from Namco Museum Vol. 3. Other maze ideas I have are a carnival inspired by the Funhouse from Pac-Man World or Sweet Land from Pac ‘n Roll, a space station inspired by Pac-Man World’s space world and Pac-Attack PS1’s aesthetic, and a theme based on Tower of Druaga.
I think some of the existing maze themes could use some more music, mostly the ones that use only one song. The Block Town maze could use variants of the songs like Pac-Mania Room from Namco Museum Vol. 5, or the Pac & Pal remix from the DS version of Pac-Man Vs. The Mappy maze could use songs from Mappy Arrangement, Hopping Mappy, and the Mappy theme from Pac ‘n Jump. I think the Wild West theme should have Wild West 1 & 2 from Pac-Man: Adventures in Time because those songs SLAP. Lastly, this is very subjective, but I think the Tree Tops maze should use the original versions of the World 2 songs, either alongside or in place of their Re-Pac versions, as I feel they sound better. Again, very subjective, but regardless of which version you choose, I definitely feel the credit for the songs should go to the original composer, David Logan, rather than or alongside Masashi Sugiyama and Meiko Tamada, who just did the Re-Pac arrangements. Speaking of music, a “sound test” in the menu would be nice, maybe even allowing us to set any song as the menu music.
Finally, one of the only gameplay ideas I have is to add Miru as a “ghost” that can appear. She could work like she did in Pac & Pal, stealing Power Pellets and upgrade power-ups and bringing them to the ghost house where they disappear. Another idea is that since one of the clover’s random effects is to change your color palette, I think having another effect changing the player’s character would be fun. It could even replace the color change effect since you already get that from the mushroom. I also ask that if you end up adding another upgrade power-up that you make it the iconic pretzel from Ms. Pac-Man.
So that’s all the suggestions I’ve got. Sorry this ended up being so long, but I’ve just been having an absolute blast with this game and when that happens I just tend to get ideas for more things. Of course, I’m not expecting these suggestions to actually make it into the next update, and I’m more than satisfied with the game as it is now. You and everyone else on the dev team seriously did a fantastic job, this has become one of my favorite Pac-Man maze games on the same level of the all-time GOATs like Pac-Man Arrangement. This is the kind of Pac-Man I’ve been missing from the official maze games from far, far too long.
Had fun with this game, but I do find the point scaling to go through the roof if you mostly get point bonus eggs. I was able to out pace the game's difficulty and get 150 lives. It is truly "Forever".
I do find the "late game" mazes to feel way too big and time consuming, a part of me wishes there was a generation option to cap the size and get difficulty from something else.
I ended up stopping at R100 and had a great time.
I'll continue to work on the difficulty balancing as I work towards 1.2, so stay tuned! I'm glad you have been enjoying it.
I been loving it so much dude, thanks.
This is definitely one of the best quality fan-games I've ever seen. Fantastic work!
I love this game so much
Really fun. I got up to loop 3, round 123, thing is, the game kinda just starts to break down at loop 3. The mazes start to become so big that it takes a long time to generate them and i assume the mazes would eventually get so big it would just crash.
Not only that, but the big mazes are just kinda unfun. They don't even generate enough dots to fill the maze, there are probably too many power pellets honestly, and because the maze is so big most of the time your not dealing with any ghosts because there's still only one spawner, making the rounds easy.
At that point i probably could have gone on forever because i had 100+ lives and the rounds got so easy. It was only my greed that did me in because i accidentally grabbed the glass cannon power up, loss 100+ lives and got softlocked because i was so fast that moving would just have me clip though the wall and teleport back to spawn.
So uh i have some suggestions.
- Glass cannon should have a max of how many lives it can take, since going from 100 lives back to like 3 just feels bad.
- There really should be a speed cap so you don't get softlocked.
- Mazes should stop increasing in size around loop 3.
- Ghost should probably take a increasing number of lives after each loop, since it wasn't really skill that got me so many lives, i just got so many points because of the score powerup and ghosts that i kinda just outscaled the game.
- Every time i got the clover power up i got unlucky, I'm guessing this is a bug. But even if its not the chance for it to actually do something should be way higher.
Some other things.
- So i think the cheese power up only appears in the cheese maze? Or maybe its really rare, but given that mirror only last for one life it should probably be more common.
- Idk what's going on with some of the ghosts, i only found Kinky once during loop 2 on the gold maze and by that time there were too many ghosts to really see its effects. I also haven't even seen 4 other ghosts, i thought that maybe they may be for loop 2+ but well, nope. Idk about the ghosts i haven't seen but honestly Kinky should just be part of the normal pool of ghosts you can get.
- I think the Paclopedia should also show the maze types, it would help with appreciating the maze gimmicks since honestly some of the gimmicks are so subtle i can't really tell what they are.
I wager most of the ghosts you're missing are from VS. mode. I do believe the clover effect may be bugged, so expect another patch sometime soon. The cheese item should appear in other mazes after you collect it the first time in the cheese maze, though this may be another bug. There is a maximum maze size, and there are failsafes in place in the event that a maze can't generate properly. I'll continue to work on the balancing since I want the game to continue being fun even at high rounds like that. Thank you for all your feedback!
Hey there. I tested the game with an Atari controller for Player 1, Genesis controller for Player 2, and GameCube controller for Player 3. I'm glad that you listed the keyboard controls right on this Itch page. Taking a snapshot of them with my phone was really easy, and transferring the controls to JoyToKey was a success.
Being able to put the characters in "Key 1, Key 2, Key 3 mode" was extremely helpful. It was a little annoying that, even in key mode, the game still imposes Enter and Esc on various buttons. But overall, I was really pleased with the results.
This is one of the better Pacman games for Windows.
Awesome! You should be able to see which keys do what in the controls menu as well, assuming the patch your playing has them.
It's not that I can't see controls - I can see them and also sense them, when they're imposed.
Like, if I set Player 1 to Key1 mode, and then find out that some button will pause the game, I can tell that menu navigation controls are still being imposed, even though every character is in Key mode.
A lot of developers want to include keybinders in their games. I'm not a proponent of that, because every new keybinder is something I have to learn, and the more of them there are, the more likely I am to run into a frivolous shortcoming.
That being said, when Pacman games gradually get better on Itch, I'll acknowledge it, and that has indeed happened.
Good game! here are some recommendations!
Enemies:
Toc-man from Pac-Man World (can be a boss or a normal enemy)
Blasty and Itchy from Pac-man Party Royale
Creepy from the Minecraft and Pac-man Collab
The Chicken from Crossy Road (also appeared in Pac-man 256)
NEW MODE?
MAKER MODE?
Actually yeah, some boss ghosts to shake things up at certain level thresholds would be cool.
-The robot ghost from Arrangement is an obvious one.
-Toc-Man you could feasibly do something with by having him walk around slowly but occasionally shoot dots, rev roll and butt bounce.
-Biggaboo from Pac-Pix could be an interesting case where he hops around and gets bigger each time you chomp him with a power pellet.
I love this game so much! It really is addicting
I hope for more updates and maze themes in the future
A couple of cool addition would be:
-Adding visited maze themes in Paclopedia
-Remaining dots counter, especially for big mazes would be useful
Thank you so much for making this game
hey when using a controller if you select your character/colour, when pressing A button (The decline/go back button) you don't leave the colour screen and instead the colours stay on screen while you can navigate menus your not suppose to. Hope this is helpful!
Thank you! Looking into it!
Can we have options for:
-Fully randomizing which maps come up in arcade mode or such? It does get a lil tiring running through the same classic and block town before things start becoming fully random.
-Set window resolutions?
EDIT: Also, the Pac-Dot speed boost upgrade makes controlling your movements nigh-impossible
EDIT 2: "World 2: Rally-X Remix" doesn't loop properly
I'll look into it. Thank you!
I think the first bug I mentioned has to do with the Pac-Dot speed boost the lemon gives you when combined with the speed boost from either arrows or banana peels
This game is EPIC! One thing though, I was playing with controller and when in game, I wasn't able to pause using the controller which may be a bug or on my end idk. But what IS a bug is when you play Arcade with controller then pause (using enter cause u cant pause with controller) and go back to menu, you loose the ability to select things on the menu using the controller (example: you can't select play, credits or exit with the controller). It would be le epic if this got fixed so I can FULLY play with thy epic controller. Apart from that though this is awesome!
Thank you for letting me know! I'm working on a fix that will take care of quite a few things like that at the moment so stay tuned!
Coolio! Thank u for reading my LONG message (too long <( °^° )>). Btw do NOT overwork yourself.
Too late!
This game is awesome, but not work on my PC. It's required SSE4.2 instructions
ANYWAY Me and my friend got many fun together, so yeah.
Aw, well that's a shame. I'm glad you still got to enjoy it.
Really love what you've put together for this! I have a question, do you have plans to add more Namco crossover stages? It'd be real neat to see some stuff lifted from Tower of Druaga or a playable Gilgamesh!
Only time will tell!
other suggestions would b to have a custom music player (so i can listen to CE music and katamari music ingame..) ,and also Please fix diagonal inputs (i lost so many lives to inputs getting eaten from accidentally holding two keys at once
Not sure how this happened, but I got to round 104, and despite eating all of the pellets, the level won't finish. I have no choice but to force a game over.
20,654,230 is a pretty good score, at least.
Other side of the maze. Itch wouldn't let me put two images in one comment for some reason.
I'll look into it! Thank you for letting me know.
Content-wise, I absolutely love it, the game is pure Pac-Man and the pixel art is fantastic, but I have issues regarding the game's resolution and scaling:
The game's minimum native internal resolution seems to be 216x228, depending on the aspect ratio set, but the Integer scaling mode absolutely does not scale by an integer, at least at 1080p; the highest integer that should be able to fit is 864x912, but the game displays in an oddball 755x1007 within the 1920x1080 container.
Narrowing the window to less than 512 pixels wide causes the game screen to disappear when integer scaling is set (even with the aspect ratio set to 3:4 or 4:3!), and while Fit allows the window to go narrower, the game is smaller than 240x320 so it's impossible to properly play the game on a CRT set to 240p (tate) at 3:4. This is a shame, cause I used a screenshot to see what it would look like and it's beautiful. Solving these issues would make all of us >1% of players very happy!
I'll look into it!
update suggestion: add bean eater from this video Plug & Plague
i also love the game
the game is really really cool and i Love it. it scratches my need for more pac-man arrangement-type gameplay and also the vague roguelike type gameplay is really nifty. also the art is top-notch i LOVE everything here. i have Some gripes but they're a little minor, if not sadly a bit long-worded:
- i literally Cannot distinguish the lime skincolor in the grass world from the grass itself. i rolled it with the mushroom and was just cursed to be Unable to see myself well at all for the next 3 rounds. my eyesight stinks
- somehow, someway, make the cameo enemies (pookas, roadsters, meowkies etc.) able to be dispatched, or maybe have them be stunned for longer? i've been caught in several situations where i kinda just get fucked over without any way to escape because i happen to get surrounded by them after eating a power pellet instead of the regular ghosts, and it kinda stinks u,wu
- for how impactful Glass Cannon is, it should REALLY have its own sprite. that shit is Crazy to just trigger on random
- please please please let me rebind my controls Please
- a way to save and quit runs? (like maybe every 10 rounds? i've found myself in multiple scenarios where i just have to Leave my pc and i can't continue a really good run. but i'd understand if you don't want to put that in)
also, not to come off nitpicky, but i've noticed there's a few typos, so i figure you'd probably want to know:
- in inky's paclopedia description, he's referred to as blinky once
- "when he stars to flash" in lucky's description
- in the spectral monster description, "syphon" should be "siphon"
The game works great for me, but a friend of mine said that he can't get the game to run at all. It shows an error message for him and then immediately closes on him. :( Any clue on what's happening there?
Godot sometimes has issues like that. I suggest looking through this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/s/PunPun41vP
probably my favorite pacman game out there!! really good job, it scratches all the itches i've been looking for in a maze game
(i could have waited until i got to the high score screen to post my score, but this screenshot is funny and my hand started to hurt.. whoopsies!)
Now THAT is impressive. Well done!
This feels like the Power Bomberman of Pac-Man And that’s a good thing
Any plans for online Coop me and my friends would love to play this together My girlfriend was also wondering if you plan to make a Mobile port of this
For online co-op, I suggest playing over parsec or a similar game-hosting platform. I have no experience in net-code nor the resources to host servers so as of right now online implementation is off the table. Mobile port is unlikely. Thank you for asking!
Any way to disable gamepad rumble at all? I rather not disconnect my gamepad just to play a single game
You should be able to just set vibration to 0
This game is brilliant. Perhaps one of my favorite Pac-Man games, official or otherwise. Probably sitting in my Top 3, give or take.
Also, check out my high scores! That's probably what playing Pac-Man games since you were 2 or 3 does to you.
That's sick! Almost beats mine.
This is absolutely fantastic! Basically Arrangement 2!
Are there any plans for a CEDX or CE2 style game modes? i kinda would love to see that frantic gameplay style being combined with the Arrangement mechanics and power-ups
Even if not this is still the most fantastic Pac-Man fan game i have ever played!
My thoughts exactly! :)
I was thinking of making a fan game for that in the past, but if it doesn't get added officially I may figure out a way to make a mod for this game instead.
I made a walkthrough¡¡ Amazing game 🌻
This game is probably the best pac-man fangame i've played yet, but for some reason the round number isn't displaying properly.
How strange. I'll look into it
Well, while I was pretty content with the first version already, this 1.1 update blows that out of the water in every single way!
What a delightful Pac-Man experience. This is probably my favorite Pac-Man fan project ever now. The fact that it has a bunch of references to the whole franchise, with a lot of original stuff thrown in as well (the skins, the music, the level themes, heck, the Versus Mode!) makes it a real trip for a fan like me. It's so easy to get into as well.
I really have no real criticisms or any further comments, I just wanted to sing this game's praises for a bit!
How many stages are in this thing