Show HN: Reverse Pac-Man
35 comments
·May 5, 2025tantalor
You should make it so user can hold down a key to change direction before they reach the intersection, joystick style.
As it is, it feels like you are checking for key press (not key down) in a narrow window when the ghost reaches the intersection. That is very hard to play. It is much more forgiving if I can press and hold the key whenever I want.
Eagle64
Thank you for the suggestion. Your wish has been granted. It is definitely better like this.
KennedyHere
Fun game! From the title, I was expecting to guide Pac-Man to put all the dots back in place.
alnwlsn
For that, you want this rom hack/patch
Eagle64
Haha. I haven’t thought of this. That would be a cool other mode
vunderba
While that would be amusing, mechanically it would be identical to the original game.
progforlyfe
It's not loading at all for me. Hug of death?
Eagle64
Even with this link ? https://themarelle.itch.io/reverse-pac-man
bentcorner
For anyone interested in this style of gameplay mechanic, the game Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons (steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/225080/Brothers__A_Tale_o...) uses a twin-stick approach to this, and builds puzzles around controlling two "people".
It's a quick play and the game is pretty good, I recommend experiencing it.
bitwize
That game was an emotional journey, man. Very short as these games go, but it hit hard.
And the music was by Gustaf Grefberg, "Lizardking", my favorite oldskool demo musician by a mile.
brudgers
I can't see the whole screen on my laptop, and the screen doesn't scroll.
Eagle64
Thanks for the feedback. It is fixed
amadeuspagel
Awesome. It's mind-bending to control two players. The idea of using arrow keys to control one player and WASD to control another is genius. Maybe you can visualize which is which by coloring the explanatory text.
vunderba
I built a dual snake game where you simultaneously control two snakes a while back, perhaps I should do a Show HN about it at some point.
https://specularrealms.itch.io/the-twins-of-caduceus
Fair warning: It's a game made for people who excel at ambidextrous tasks like patting one's head and rubbing one's tummy, or juggling Rubik's cubes that you are also solving.
eesmith
I used to solo play 2-player Gauntlet for the PC this way, back around 1990.
In the 1980s it was pretty common to have 2-player games with both players on the same keyboard.
Edit: Spacewar (see https://archive.org/details/msdos_Spacewar_1985) is an example of a two-player-on-one-keyboard game, from 1985.
redbluething
Yellow Wizard Needs Food Badly!
chrisweekly
Warrior is about to die!
man that takes me back
xnx
Would be fun to have dual stick controller support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API
pmontra
It's one of those things that "why did nobody think about it yet?!"
roskelld
One Little Ghost (2012) [1] [2] for the ZX81 is one version I only recently found out about. Figured it was worth mentioning here given how impressive it is for a game on the humble ZX81 machine that's well over 40 years old.
toast0
Pac-Man Vs. [1] was a commercial game on this wavelength. I don't think I ever played that one.
jaimebuelta
I was going to say the same thing. Pac-Man Vs was incredibly fun and a great party game.
null
roskelld
Are you planning on adding the power pills to give Pac Man a fighting chance?
Also, I noticed that he often circles around the upper left area a few times at the start even though there are no dots to collect.
Eagle64
Good idea ! That will add a new cool dynamic. The behavior of the Pac-Man is to avoid the ghost with some random pattern added. This might happen.
mtVessel
On FF (similar on Edge):
Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to reverse-pacman.staticrun.app. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR
kmoser
On Firefox it freezes on the keyboard instructions screen for me. Console shows it requires WebGL. Maybe put a message on screen indicating that?
Eagle64
Thanks for letting me know. There is a problem with the host. I moved it to itch.io https://themarelle.itch.io/reverse-pac-man
Keep one eye on the first ghost and the other on the second