Google Pac-Man

A maze that fits in a search bar

The cabinet is a lump of white clay with a violet screen dropped into it, pellets rolled between someone’s fingers. The doodle version ran for one day in 2010 and broke enough office productivity that people still bring it up. What made it stick was not the graphics, it was the shape of the maze. Tight corners, one long open corridor across the middle, and a ghost house sitting right where you want to cut through.

The board above holds 122 pellets. Clearing all of them takes about ninety seconds if nothing goes wrong, and something always goes wrong around the sixth or seventh sweep.

Three ghosts, three personalities

They are not identical. Each one runs a slightly different mix of chase and randomness, so the pale one tends to shadow you while the darkest one wanders off and then reappears exactly where you were heading. That inconsistency is the point. Predictable ghosts make a boring maze.

Eat one of the four flashing power pellets in the corners and the mood flips for a few seconds. They turn near white, they run, and you get 200 points for every one you catch. Waiting until two ghosts are close before grabbing the pellet is the difference between an average score and a good one.

Controls that do not fight you

Arrow keys and WASD both work. The on screen pad exists because half the people who find this are on a phone in a queue somewhere, and a thumb pad beats swiping at a maze. Queue your next turn a moment early, the character will take the corner as soon as it opens.

Where it sits next to the others

Compared to the frantic clicking of zerg rush google, this one rewards patience. It has more in common with google snake game, where the pressure builds slowly and then all at once. Players who want something with a shorter fuse usually end up at google block breaker or space invaders google.

And if you just want to look at something ridiculous for thirty seconds instead of concentrating, google gravity and google tilt are two clicks away. Everything is indexed on the google easter eggs page.

Scoring notes

Pellets are worth 10, power pellets 50, frightened ghosts 200 each, and clearing the board hands over a 300 point bonus before the next level loads. Levels do not change the layout, they just make the chase tighter, so a run that gets to level four is genuinely a good run.