Pac-Man Community was a Facebook Pac-Man game developed by Genvid and published by Facebook Gaming in collaboration with Bandai Namco Entertainment, released in 2021.
Pac-Man Community lets players create and play mazes; the original Pac-Man arcade game is also included. On January 5, 2023, the game's closure was announced and was shut down on February 4, 2023.[1]
Gameplay[]
In similar fashion to World's Biggest Pac-Man, Pac-Man Community allows the player to create and play community created Pac-Man mazes with three other players, or computer controlled players.
Similarly to the original Pac-Man, the player(s) must eat all of the Pac-Dots in the maze while avoiding Ghosts Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde. The game features simultaneous multiplayer; four multi-colored Pac-Men (colored yellow, green, purple and pink respectively) must cooperate or compete with each other in order to clear each maze. Upon completing a stage in Quick Play, the players will advance to another randomly selected stage. The game speed increases after every 3 rounds completed. After the end of every round or game, the player's points, Pac-Dots and ghost chomps are counted.
The game features several game modes:
Play[]
"Play" lets the player play through any of the user-created Pac-Man mazes.
- Quick Play lets the player quickly match up with three other players and make their way through randomly selected mazes. Quick Play matches can be found or hosted by the player.
- User Mazes highlights popular mazes and lets players search through user-created mazes by their number. User Mazes can be played by a single player.
- Join Room allows the player to join a player room by code.
- Classic Arcade is a recreation of the original Pac-Man, with its original rules.
- Additionally, the player can view their rankings.
Create[]
"Create" lets the player create their own mazes and view their previously created mazes.
- Create Maze brings up a maze creator. The player can freely place, remove and adjust Pac-Man's starting location, Pac-Dots, Power Pellets, the Bonus Fruit's spawning location, maze walls, warp tunnels, background stickers, the colors of the maze walls and floors. Some stickers and colors are unlocked after meeting certain criteria. Some of the stickers include character artwork from Pac-Man World Re-Pac.
- My Mazes allows the player to view any mazes they've previously created.
- My Playlists allows the player to create playlists of mazes made by themselves or by others.
Watch[]
"Watch" allows players to spectate random player matches. While spectating, two gauges named AI PAC-MAN are present on the right side of the screen. Pressing the Pac-Man or Ghost buttons respectively allows the player to cheer onto said side, increasing their respective meters. When the gauges reach one of the two marked thresholds or are filled in completely, the speed of Pac-Man or the Ghosts are increased.
Development[]
Comparison between Pac-Man Live Studio and Pac-Man Community
On May 22nd, 2020 - in honor of Pac-Man's 40th Anniversary - a game titled Pac-Man Live Studio was announced by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Pac-Man Live Studio was to be a web game published by Amazon, and was planned to have integration with the Twitch livestreaming service.[2][3] Despite being reportedly scheduled to release as early as June of 2020, updates on Pac-Man Live Studio were never provided following the game's announcement, and the game missed its planned release window; though Bandai Namco's outlets have claimed that the game is still in some form of development, and is not fully canceled following a year after the game's intended release schedule.[4] All mentions of the game on amazon.com and pacman.com would be removed in the months following, including the game's Twitter account deactivating.
The Pac-Man Community game first launched in December of 2021, roughly a year-and-a-half after Pac-Man Live Studio's planned launch date.[5][6] Though not officially confirmed to be the same game, if Community and Live Studio are compared side-by-side, it is apparent that they are effectively the same game. While the visual interface and colors have been tweaked, the actual functionality and game options are largely identical between the two. This implies that Facebook - through unknown means - was granted the distribution rights to the game later on; instead of, or potentially in addition to, Amazon/Twitch.
Promotional image released one day before the game's closure, featuring a mosaic of many of the user-created mazes blended on top of the game's icon artwork.
The game left it's Beta stage in Q2 2022. The game had achieved 6 million players and 17,000 user-created mazes by June 3, 2022.[7] On January 5, 2023, the game was announced to shut down on February 4, 2023, rendering the game unplayable after said date.[1] On February 3, 2023, the Facebook page posted a mosaic of selected user-created mazes before the game closed the following day.[8]
Gallery[]
Artwork[]
Screenshots[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://fb.watch/hT0K6VLhj6/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/officialpacman/status/1263816883788120071
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20200522061355/https://www.amazongames.com/en-us/games/pac-man-live-studio
- ↑ https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/17/22440891/amazon-games-pac-man-live-studio-twitch-bandai-namco
- ↑ https://twitter.com/officialpacman/status/1467963251975729157
- ↑ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/12/pac-man-community-facebook-gaming/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/officialpacman/status/1532754010842595331
- ↑ https://www.facebook.com/PACMANCOMMUNITY/photos/a.398498678696865/756094642937265/