Player One Ready! Life-Sized Pac-Man

So last summer we had way too much fun with Life-Sized Angry Birds, so this summer we decided to bring another digital game into the real world. In a word, the results were AWESOME!

Set-Up

Look up Pac-Man on your favorite search engine, and you'll get quite a few screen shots of the classic video game mazes. I used construction paper to lay out the maze as I was short on time, but if you wanted to be technical about it, you could grab some masking and measuring tape and go crazy!

We used a whole bunch of die-cut circles for the dots, but you could use plastic coins, LEGO pieces, or any other small item that you have in copious amounts. 

GamePlay

Select one player as Pac-Man (or Mrs. Pac-Man as the case may be), and two players as ghosts. Assure the rest of your participants that everyone will have a chance to play both parts. We gave each player one minute in the maze to pick up as many dots as they could. The ghosts had to stay in their center starting position for ten seconds, and then they could start giving chase. Typically speaking, the ghosts had to walk backwards or step heal-to-toe to slow them down a little bit. The round ended when the time ran out, or Pac-Man (or Mrs. Pac-Man), was tagged by one of the ghosts. 

The key to everyone participating was rotation. All of the participants started in a line, and the first participant was Player One and the second and third participants were the ghosts. When Pac-Man (or Mrs. Pac-Man) was tagged, they went to the end of the line, and the first ghost became Player One, the second ghost became first ghost, and so on and so on until everyone had a turn to play each part. 

When each round ended, the two ghosts would reset the maze by replacing the dots that Pac-Man (or Mrs. Pac-Man) had collected, and the game would begin again. 

Extras

Keep a High Score Board with each participant's name.

Find some Pac-Man sounds and have them playing while the rounds are happening.

Consider a way to have Pac-Man (or Mrs. Pac-Man) grab that power-up that allows them to eat the ghosts for extra points. Maybe have a ball they can grab that lets them tag the ghosts and send them back to their starting location. After a certain amount of time, they'll have to surrender the ball.