Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) is my game-essay entry for the Critical Distance pandemics and games essay jam which was held in early 2021. This short Bitsy game shares the connections I felt between Pac-Man and that weird year that was 2020. And please don't come away from the game thinking that I hate Pac-Man; I still have a great fondness for the pucky little game. As with my other Bitsy games, Pareidolia was another attempt to push the engine as far as I could. This time I delved into modifying the javascript engine code itself. Which is, I suppose, the Bitsy equivalent of wall-hacking but it proved to be a nice way to work.
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honestly i dont wanna seem harsh on this game, but i wasnt really amazed by it, its incredibly short and makes a cute connection between 2020 and pacman, a pretty clever one but still i would just call it that, clever and cute, it doesnt really do anything else and honestly the game felt a bit incomplete and didnt have a good conclusion, i didnt hate the game no way but i just thought after completing it "wait that was it? well that was... fine"
Evitar pessoas enquanto tenta fazer compras = fugir de fantasmas em Pac-Man? Taí uma ligação (que faz muito sentido) que nunca fiz.
feels like one of the best instances of someone projecting their direct life experiences onto a game--the bitsy aesthetic works perfectly here and crawford's anecdote of social distancing and the paranoid spatial optimization of pac-man are fantastic. another review already pointed out that the game does a great job by not instating any "fail states", but rather, just like in real life, things move on when you collide or interfere with others. very chill, very personal and unique.
I've seen people compare supermarket shopping in pandemic conditions to Metal Gear Solid; rounding blind right-angled corners, desperately avoiding an enemy customer's cone of vision, trying alternate routes to the item pickups and objective markers (my local Tesco Express is basically like playing on European Extreme) but the Pac-Man comparison works better - other shoppers as erratic ghosts with seemingly no artificial intelligence, going wherever the hell they please, chasing you in and out of aisles into areas you didn't really wanna end up in, no way to stand still for more than a split-second.
I love that there are no hard rules or fail conditions for coming into contact with other shoppers in this game - it has happened to us all, no matter how hard we try. Some of these grannies just really wanna breathe on you, I guess, despite the fact their life bars are way shorter. Cutting the narrative fat around this and giving the main 'game' portion some A/V sparkle would make this the first legit worthwhile bit of 'COVID Art' I've seen.
I love that there are no hard rules or fail conditions for coming into contact with other shoppers in this game - it has happened to us all, no matter how hard we try. Some of these grannies just really wanna breathe on you, I guess, despite the fact their life bars are way shorter. Cutting the narrative fat around this and giving the main 'game' portion some A/V sparkle would make this the first legit worthwhile bit of 'COVID Art' I've seen.
Using the feeling of getting sandwiched by ghosts in pac-man to capture the anxiety of avoiding people who don't seem to give a shit during a pandemic is honestly fucking brilliant. Gorgeous art too.