We had met John at Gen Con during the release of
In his email, John said they were looking to create a new tabletop game for Pac-Man. Buffalo Games had released a
We were a bit stunned at the idea. What an incredible opportunity to work on such a classic and iconic game. We had also been wanting to design more games we could play with our kids, after our enjoyable experience working on
It did not take long at all for me to respond to John with a resounding “Yes!”.
My mind instantly started to buzz with ideas of how to create a multiplayer Pac-Man in board game form. Two games came to the forefront of my thoughts:
I was perhaps too naive in thinking that this would be a simple project. After all, Pac-Man is one of the most simple video games created, right? You just move in a direction and eat what you run into while trying not to get eaten yourself.
I started researching the game, and discovered that there is a surprising amount of details to be found under the surface. People have analyzed every inch of the original video game in an effort to accomplish the highest possible scores. The ghosts, which are the enemies in the game, have programmed routes and personalities, and learning how best to avoid them and then to capture them at just the right time is crucial to becoming a Pac-Master.
This study led to the most important design decision of the entire game: What do we do about the ghosts?
We knew that we wanted up to four Pac-Man characters moving around the maze at one time, but it was also essential to have the ghosts in the maze as well. How were the ghosts going to move and interact with the players? I initially thought of two possible solutions:
(1) They could move randomly through a dice roll
I disliked this idea almost immediately. A randomized move would not accomplish the feeling of the ghost chasing you down, nor would it allow you to plan and strategize for how they might react to you.
(2) They could move with a programmed deck of movement cards
This presented similar problems to the first option. How could I program them to respond to movement of the players on the board when the board state would be constantly changing?
The problem of the ghosts puzzled and troubled me . . . until a critical light bulb moment. There was a third solution:
(3) Players could control the ghosts!
I felt right away that this was a great idea. After a player finished moving their Pac-Man character, they would move one or two of the ghosts around the maze, trying to eat the other Pac-Man players. Letting the ghosts be controlled by human players allowed them to function like the ghosts in the video game: they could respond to the current board state at all times, either to chase down players, or to run and hide if they had been turned-to-blue and were edible themselves.
With these ideas in place, our first prototype for the game quickly came together.
Two weeks after the initial email from John, we had a fully working prototype on the table. It was thrilling to see our little Pac-Man and ghost pieces chasing each other around, gobbling up fruit pieces and Pac-Dots and buying unique power up cards to enhance their abilities. We were so energized by the success of our first prototype: much of the game was already working well, and it felt like Pac-Man, which was a delight and an absolute requirement for this project.
What we did not yet realize is that we had made the game far too complicated.
After working in the Everdell universe for years on fairly complex strategy games, we still had a ways to go before our design brains were in actual “family-weight” territory. But thankfully, John Bell had a masterful eye for this.
John’s response to our first prototype was encouraging and informative. He saw the good ideas and was really excited about the core gameplay concepts, but in the kindest way possible he told us it was just far too much. We needed the game to be much simpler and faster. John knows his audience so well, and he was completely right. We had created a “gamer’s game” Pac-Man, but what we needed was something much closer to the original Pac-Man video game: something that even non-gamers could pick up and get into right away.
So we went back to the drawing board and started asking hard questions. How could we shorten the game? What mechanics could we cut from the system without losing the game completely?
In our first version, players rolled dice and programmed their movements, and could pay in Pac-Dots to reroll. We decided to try a small deck of movement cards instead, with each player having identical decks. This eliminated the decision point of rerolling or not, and made the game feel more balanced since all players had the same possible movements.
We also simplified the rather large deck of power up cards into something more streamlined and easier to digest. Other details were similarly analyzed, refined, smoothed, and tweaked.
We continued to check in with John along the way, and he continued to patiently encourage and challenge us to dig even deeper and cut away even more. What is the absolute core gameplay, here? How can we get right down to it, to the most simple and fun aspect of this game? He gave us the mental picture of a soccer mom picking up the game from the shelf because it looked fun, and then playing it with her kids at the kitchen table. Would the they all understand the game? Would the mom and the kids enjoy playing it together? We want them to finish the game and say, “Let’s play again!”
John’s uncanny ability to so deeply question every mechanic and try to find a way to refine and simplify is something we are so grateful to have experienced. It has helped our design process immensely moving forward, and we are so thankful for John’s long-suffering along the way as we continued to throw complex design choices at him that he had to bat away.
Our next major build of the game was much closer to the target. The board was significantly smaller, allowing players to zip around faster and interact more often. This also gave the ghosts more of a threatening presence, since you are rarely completely safe. The movement card system was working pretty well, and we felt like we had done a good job finally simplifying the game down to where it needed to be.
John had similar feelings. The game was definitely much closer to the mark now, but it seemed to be missing something . . . a little more pizazz and pop and excitement. Could we find a way to make it even more snappy? That hard-to-define and elusive ingredient called “fun”?
We felt the same way, but how to get there?
I studied what we had made. I was proud of it. It was multi-player Pac-Man on a table. Players ate Pac-Dots and Fruit and Power Pellets that let them chase and eat ghosts. Players also controlled ghosts and used them to chase down and eat other players, taking their lives. There was fun and zany power-ups you could purchase. It was cool. But what was still dragging it down?
I thought back to my initial inspirations of Robo Rally and King of Tokyo. What made those games fun?
In our first version of Pac-Man, I had combined the idea of dice-rolling with programming, having players choose the order in which they used their dice, somewhat similar to Robo Rally. Now the only time players were rolling dice was when they moved the ghosts. Maybe we had made the wrong decision to have players use a deck of movement cards. What if players simply rolled dice to move their Pac-Man, and then could spend Pac-Dots to reroll?
I initially bristled at the idea. Roll and move—what was I thinking? Wasn’t that one of the most hated mechanics by strategy gamers? I thought of all those games on the back of cereal boxes where you just roll a die and see what bad or good thing happens to you. There was no actual game there!
Then I took off my "Fancy Designer of Strategy Board Games” hat, and remembered what we were trying to create here: a genuine family-weight board game that would appeal to a mass market. But I was also nervous. From the beginning, I had wanted to create a game that gamers would also enjoy, just like King of Tokyo had so brilliantly accomplished.
Roll and move?
Oh fine. I decided to try it. I could always go back.
I think John Bell had always known this would work. He was just patiently waiting in his office on the other side of the United States for me to figure this out.
I was shocked, humbled, and delighted when the roll and move mechanic worked. I realized that there were some crucial elements that made it work so well:
(1): Players are not moving in a straight line. You have a decision at every point which way you will go, so you don’t feel like the game is playing you.
(2): Players have the ability to reroll by spending Pac-Dots, which provides a fun push-your-luck element.
(3): Certain power-ups in the game help you work around limitations you might encounter from your roll.
(4): Moving a long distance is not necessarily better all the time, so rolling low is not always a bad thing.
(5): Picking up some dice and rolling them is fun!
Another thing I failed to recognize is that many folks who might pick up this title are familiar with the roll and move mechanic, so this would be a good way to ease them into the game. I truly doubted that it would work, but I’m glad I was wrong, and that we tried it.
Our final build of the game was in many ways very similar to our first version. Players move around their Pac-Man character through a maze, gobbling up items, and they move ghosts to gobble up each other, and whoever gets the high score is the winner. But there were so many changes and refinements to be made along the way. Once again I am reminded that in game design “simple” does not mean “easy”.
We learned so much from our time creating Ultimate Pac-Man. The entire process was truly a delight, thanks in no small part to the sage wisdom and patience of John Bell at Buffalo Games, and also because of the honor to work on such a classic icon of gaming history.
In the end, we truly feel that we have created what we set out to accomplish: a fast, fun, and zany family-weight game that anyone can play, but offers enough good decision points for gamers to enjoy the ride as well.
I hope you get a chance to try out Ultimate Pac-Man, and soak up all the retro nostalgic goodness with your family and friends.
