My initial experience playing the game was unexpectedly fleeting, as it probably was for most other people who had the opportunity to play PacMan (WeiHao Xu's). Because the game begins as soon as its loaded and ends after a set few seconds, it took a few playthroughs for me to cement my first impressions. Like the game it was inspired by, PacMan was quite intuitive. Using the arrow keys, I was able to control the PacMan sprite and move it about the screen. Then, using my empirical knowledge of playing previous Pacman titles, the obvious objective of the game was to consume as many little orbs as possible in the given time frame. And so, that is what I had set out to do. Now the objective sounds simple enough, and with practice, collecting as many points would then be only a matter of pursuing all the densest pockets of potential points. A slightly annoying twist, though, which requires the player's adaptation is the randomness of the dots. Not only do they appear in random parts of the playspace, they also completely respawn every second. This in turn, defeats the purpose of crossing the screen to devour the big clump of points on the other side since they will despawn before they can even be reached. Now then, the strategy becomes, first judging the approximate radius around the PacMan which he can reach before the next wave of dots spawns. Second, a bias towards dots nearer to the center of the playspace is arguably preferable since if a clump of dots near the edge of the screen may pull PacMan away from future clumps that spawn in the interior, and now the PacMan's radius of dots he can reach within the second not encompasses unplayable area outside the playspace that won't spawn dots for PacMan to gobble. Thirdly, you must be in the good graces of RNGesus. Or more explicitly, one needs good luck to score well in this game. Because the timer is so short and the dots respawn so frequently in this short time, a significant amount of points that you score are almost entirely luck based. No amount of strategic play in this game will account for the sheer amount of points one's luck will earn them, but that does not rule out any strategy at all. This fine balance therefore encourages much replayability when it comes to earning high scores. No matter how many times you play your best, you may just get a little luckier at predicting the spawning of dots and earn an even higher score, and conversely, you may have arguably played your best possible in some instances but the unfavorable spawns of dots may ruin any chance of a decent score. For this reason, despite not having the same visual flavor and as many interesting gameplay mechanics as its forefathers and how primitive it feels, seemingly having been made with the p5.play library, this incarnation of PacMan really feels like it captures that essential essence of an arcade game.
Weihao’s PacMan game is a unique derivative of Pac-Man, where you play as Pac-Man and eat the pellets, but instead of them being statically laid out across the board, they randomly appear and disappear. It is rather stressful when you first start, especially since at first, the arrow keys were also manipulating my browser scrolling. The actual rules and verbs of the games are not necessarily complicated though. I instinctively used the arrow keys to move, which after a few rounds, I realized encompassed all actions and were connected with the complete rules of the game. You can use them to move and if you touch one of the pellets, you consume them, increasing your score by one point.
It’s such a simple rule to eat/overlap the pellet and gain a point, but a lot of gameplay can be built around that. We see two primary examples, one where the pellets only appear temporarily and one where they are stationary but we have limited time. Other options could be explored in further levels as well, with ones which slide away from you, are magnetically attracted to you, or that you don’t want to eat them. The two examples included go pretty far though, particularly since the action of eating is so satisfying. This is accomplished perhaps by the psychological effect of eating alongside the rewarding sound played when you collide with a pellet. They go far enough to create an interesting game though mainly due to the time limit.
This time limit introduces a lot to the game. Primarily it is the sense of urgency as you play, providing the actual challenge, since 10 seconds is not a long time to collect pellets. It’s actually over before you know it and can feel quite bad, since you’re often heading towards some pellets but they’ll disappear and you won’t have enough time to redeem yourself. It’s easy to feel quite disappointed if you don’t collect enough and lose, with the dialogue telling us we have to restart, pressing in the wound.
The 10 seconds is not too long though where you feel like you’re wasting time if you keep losing. Being able to complete the level in time always feels like something you can do, no matter how many tries it takes. The combination of the satisfying nature of the game and its actions as well as this small investment, make it not possible to give up on this game. This feels even more the case once you reach the second level, which instead has a few stationary pellets. You got over the hurdle of the ever moving pellets, so these feel even more achievable. That is a complete lie though. The stress of the time is even higher here, as you know where the pellets will be, but if you can’t get them all, it’s likely due to your inefficient path. To make matters worse, you have to start all over. But now you know you can get there, so you’re stuck in that loop again.
Overall, the game takes a few simple actions and rules, presents them in a satisfying fashion, with a super quick turnaround to make the game highly replayable and pleasantly frustrating.
The main mechanism of this game is the main character eating colored beans. Players need to click the arrow keys to control the movement of the main character. The rule of the game is very simple, but it is fun. The time of the game is 10 seconds in total. Players do not need to spend much time studying how to control the main character and the goal is to get a higher score.
One feature of the game is randomness. This is because the location and number of beans appearing are random. In order to eat more beans and get a higher score, the player needs to move quickly. This game is challenging because the colored beans are constantly changing positions. When there are no beans around the player, he or she will want to move to the next position. But the beans change so quickly that it is hard to get to the place where they need to be eaten. Sometimes it is very lucky that there are plenty of beans around the main character. The player doesn't need to move too far to get a lot of points at once. Sometimes I become disappointed because the beans are all far away from me. The beans will become more and more as time decreases, which satisfies the player. Because the less time there is, the more players desire to be able to get more points in a short period of time. This game reminds me of Gluttony, they have similar rules. It would make more sense if the beans could change position more slowly, like once every 5 seconds.
The main character of the game is a yellow object. The direction of the main character's mouth will change with the direction of movement. To make it look more vivid, the designer added animation to it. The designer has added a little bouncing animation to the main character to make it cuter.
Another noteworthy point is the sound effects. The background music is added to make players feel the tension and will speed up the speed of clicking according to the rhythm of the music. In addition, whenever the main character eats a bean, there will be a special sound effect to tell the players that they have gotten an extra point.
The game sets up multiple levels. In the beginning, it always shows “Unable to get to the next level.” I have tried many times to get the score to the next level. If the designers can gradually increase the difficulty in each level, it may make players more willing to spend time on the game. The second level of the game is to eat all the beans in a limited amount of time. For me, the second level seemed easier because all the beans were stationary. The player moves with a purpose to make each step count. Meanwhile, I found an interesting thing, it seems to be a bug. When time stops, the player can still control the main character until victory.
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My initial experience playing the game was unexpectedly fleeting, as it probably was for most other people who had the opportunity to play PacMan (WeiHao Xu's). Because the game begins as soon as its loaded and ends after a set few seconds, it took a few playthroughs for me to cement my first impressions. Like the game it was inspired by, PacMan was quite intuitive. Using the arrow keys, I was able to control the PacMan sprite and move it about the screen. Then, using my empirical knowledge of playing previous Pacman titles, the obvious objective of the game was to consume as many little orbs as possible in the given time frame. And so, that is what I had set out to do. Now the objective sounds simple enough, and with practice, collecting as many points would then be only a matter of pursuing all the densest pockets of potential points. A slightly annoying twist, though, which requires the player's adaptation is the randomness of the dots. Not only do they appear in random parts of the playspace, they also completely respawn every second. This in turn, defeats the purpose of crossing the screen to devour the big clump of points on the other side since they will despawn before they can even be reached. Now then, the strategy becomes, first judging the approximate radius around the PacMan which he can reach before the next wave of dots spawns. Second, a bias towards dots nearer to the center of the playspace is arguably preferable since if a clump of dots near the edge of the screen may pull PacMan away from future clumps that spawn in the interior, and now the PacMan's radius of dots he can reach within the second not encompasses unplayable area outside the playspace that won't spawn dots for PacMan to gobble. Thirdly, you must be in the good graces of RNGesus. Or more explicitly, one needs good luck to score well in this game. Because the timer is so short and the dots respawn so frequently in this short time, a significant amount of points that you score are almost entirely luck based. No amount of strategic play in this game will account for the sheer amount of points one's luck will earn them, but that does not rule out any strategy at all. This fine balance therefore encourages much replayability when it comes to earning high scores. No matter how many times you play your best, you may just get a little luckier at predicting the spawning of dots and earn an even higher score, and conversely, you may have arguably played your best possible in some instances but the unfavorable spawns of dots may ruin any chance of a decent score. For this reason, despite not having the same visual flavor and as many interesting gameplay mechanics as its forefathers and how primitive it feels, seemingly having been made with the p5.play library, this incarnation of PacMan really feels like it captures that essential essence of an arcade game.
Weihao’s PacMan game is a unique derivative of Pac-Man, where you play as Pac-Man and eat the pellets, but instead of them being statically laid out across the board, they randomly appear and disappear. It is rather stressful when you first start, especially since at first, the arrow keys were also manipulating my browser scrolling. The actual rules and verbs of the games are not necessarily complicated though. I instinctively used the arrow keys to move, which after a few rounds, I realized encompassed all actions and were connected with the complete rules of the game. You can use them to move and if you touch one of the pellets, you consume them, increasing your score by one point.
It’s such a simple rule to eat/overlap the pellet and gain a point, but a lot of gameplay can be built around that. We see two primary examples, one where the pellets only appear temporarily and one where they are stationary but we have limited time. Other options could be explored in further levels as well, with ones which slide away from you, are magnetically attracted to you, or that you don’t want to eat them. The two examples included go pretty far though, particularly since the action of eating is so satisfying. This is accomplished perhaps by the psychological effect of eating alongside the rewarding sound played when you collide with a pellet. They go far enough to create an interesting game though mainly due to the time limit.
This time limit introduces a lot to the game. Primarily it is the sense of urgency as you play, providing the actual challenge, since 10 seconds is not a long time to collect pellets. It’s actually over before you know it and can feel quite bad, since you’re often heading towards some pellets but they’ll disappear and you won’t have enough time to redeem yourself. It’s easy to feel quite disappointed if you don’t collect enough and lose, with the dialogue telling us we have to restart, pressing in the wound.
The 10 seconds is not too long though where you feel like you’re wasting time if you keep losing. Being able to complete the level in time always feels like something you can do, no matter how many tries it takes. The combination of the satisfying nature of the game and its actions as well as this small investment, make it not possible to give up on this game. This feels even more the case once you reach the second level, which instead has a few stationary pellets. You got over the hurdle of the ever moving pellets, so these feel even more achievable. That is a complete lie though. The stress of the time is even higher here, as you know where the pellets will be, but if you can’t get them all, it’s likely due to your inefficient path. To make matters worse, you have to start all over. But now you know you can get there, so you’re stuck in that loop again.
Overall, the game takes a few simple actions and rules, presents them in a satisfying fashion, with a super quick turnaround to make the game highly replayable and pleasantly frustrating.
The main mechanism of this game is the main character eating colored beans. Players need to click the arrow keys to control the movement of the main character. The rule of the game is very simple, but it is fun. The time of the game is 10 seconds in total. Players do not need to spend much time studying how to control the main character and the goal is to get a higher score.
One feature of the game is randomness. This is because the location and number of beans appearing are random. In order to eat more beans and get a higher score, the player needs to move quickly. This game is challenging because the colored beans are constantly changing positions. When there are no beans around the player, he or she will want to move to the next position. But the beans change so quickly that it is hard to get to the place where they need to be eaten. Sometimes it is very lucky that there are plenty of beans around the main character. The player doesn't need to move too far to get a lot of points at once. Sometimes I become disappointed because the beans are all far away from me. The beans will become more and more as time decreases, which satisfies the player. Because the less time there is, the more players desire to be able to get more points in a short period of time. This game reminds me of Gluttony, they have similar rules. It would make more sense if the beans could change position more slowly, like once every 5 seconds.
The main character of the game is a yellow object. The direction of the main character's mouth will change with the direction of movement. To make it look more vivid, the designer added animation to it. The designer has added a little bouncing animation to the main character to make it cuter.
Another noteworthy point is the sound effects. The background music is added to make players feel the tension and will speed up the speed of clicking according to the rhythm of the music. In addition, whenever the main character eats a bean, there will be a special sound effect to tell the players that they have gotten an extra point.
The game sets up multiple levels. In the beginning, it always shows “Unable to get to the next level.” I have tried many times to get the score to the next level. If the designers can gradually increase the difficulty in each level, it may make players more willing to spend time on the game. The second level of the game is to eat all the beans in a limited amount of time. For me, the second level seemed easier because all the beans were stationary. The player moves with a purpose to make each step count. Meanwhile, I found an interesting thing, it seems to be a bug. When time stops, the player can still control the main character until victory.