Swayze

So of course everyone knows Pac-Man, but I was thinking about an interesting spin on it the other day. What if, instead of you controlling Pac-Man and AIs controlling the ghosts, things were the other way around? You control the ghosts and Pac-Man obeys some relatively simple rules to keep away from them.

Your goal is still for Pac-Man to collect all the dots, but his programming only makes him run from the ghosts. That means to get him to do what you want, you have to position the ghosts such that you chase him into the dots without accidentally killing him. You could have a number of puzzle levels to get the mechanics clear (chasing around corners using two ghosts, avoiding dead ends, etc), and then a score attack version where you just play like the original game.

There are also some interesting opportunities to reuse the original mechanics around the power pills. If you get a power pill, Pac-Man's behaviour is reversed: instead of running away from the ghosts, he runs towards them. That would make some puzzles (pulling Pac-Man out of a dead end) possible that weren't otherwise possible. But it also leads to an interesting score dilemma. If Pac-Man eats a ghost, he gets bonus score, but you lose a ghost you can use to control him.

Ultimately, I think what I like most about this idea is that it reframes the role of the ghosts entirely. What if they were just trying to help you all along?