How to play pac man 99

Jumping into a game of Pac-Man 99 is trivial. Learning how to play Pac-Man 99 is nearly impossible. I spent my first day with the game hating it, and my second day slowly falling in love.

The online multiplayer mode of the Pac-Man-themed battle royale is free with Nintendo Switch Online, although you can spend money on things like cosmetics, a score attack mode, and offline modes played against AI, if you’d like to. I wouldn’t bother unless you try the free release and adore it. The core game will be enough for most.

You and 98 other Pac-Men move around a single level, chased by ghosts, which you can yourself eat if you chomp on a power pellet. Eating all the regular pellets speeds you up, while eating the fruit at the middle of the board resets all the pickups so you can continue moving around the board forever. You can’t beat this level; you can only outlast your opponents. Like Tetris 99 before it, the designers of Pac-Man 99 were able to take the bones of the original game and fit them very neatly into the battle royale formula.

And I mean that literally. There is no direct way to attack the other players. You can only eat power pellets to eat ghosts, which sends Jammer Pac-Men to the boards of other players. These drone-like Pac-Men prowl around on your behalf, slowing down players who touch them.

The trick is to work up a strategy for taking out everyone else, while adapting to the changing conditions of the board as players get knocked out and your attractiveness as a target waxes or wanes. The whole game opens up once you’re able to understand the rhythms of play, and it gets real interesting, real fast.

For the first few hours, strategy felt just about impossible to formulate. The game gives you some control over your attacks and who you target, but it doesn’t bother to explain a damned thing about how they work. Turns out, your most precious resource in Pac-Man 99 is your speed. Your attacks are all dedicated to slowing everyone else down by sending over your Attack-Pacs, and your options for how to use them are arranged on either side of the screen.

On the left side of the screen you can choose between Stronger, Speed, Train, and Standard, while the right side of the screen offers the choice of Random, Hunter, Knockout, and Counter. You decide which players to target with the options on the right-hand side: set it to Knockout, for instance, and your Jammers will be sent to players who are close to getting knocked out already, piling on and hopefully getting them to panic and lose to a ghost.

Counter, on the other hand, seems to look for other players who are gunning for you, and fights back by sending those folks the Jammers every time you eat a ghost. What does Hunter do? I’ve found theories online, and it seems like it’s an assault on the current board leader, but I still don’t know for sure. There’s a lot going on in each round, and it’s hard to get a clear understanding of how you’re impacting the overall game.

On the left-hand side, you can choose how your attacks operate. Setting things to Stronger gives you a heavier attack, but less time to eat ghosts with each power pellet. If you select Speed, each power pellet will make you go faster, but you’ll be sending either fewer or weaker Pac-Attacks for each ghost eaten. (I’m not sure which, but that seems to be the trade-off.) Train lets you string together more ghosts to eat in a row, increasing your ability to do damage across the board.

Got all that? I hope so, because I’m only like 80% sure of my explanations, even with my own testing and spending plenty of reading theories from other folks trying to figure things out online. This is why I despised the game so much at first blush. It seems to have zero interest in giving you any information about how to play or what to do.

That will turn off a lot of players in the early going, but the more I played and tried to figure out these systems, the more I came to understand how they worked together to give me an advantage.

Set your attacks to Stronger and Knockout, for instance, and you’ll be pounding on the players who are already in the most trouble, scoring some easy kills, at least early in the game. Speed gives you a little extra time to think if you’re overwhelmed, although you risk sending yourself into a death spiral if the lack of Pac-Attacks keeps you from knocking out others while you’re barely hanging on. You can also set your targeting option to “random,” which does exactly what it says … based on everything I’ve seen in-game, at least.

That’s the beauty of Pac-Man 99. The design team was able to pack an amazing amount of information into a single screen, making attention the second-most important resource after speed. If you’re flicking through your targeting and attack options, you’re not watching your screen, but if you’re only watching your screen, you won’t be able to see how everyone else is doing. I’ve rarely been so aware of where I’m looking while I play a game, and how vulnerable I become in every other area when I’m focused on a singular part of the screen. Strategy begins to feel nearly unlimited as you learn how to anticipate what others are likely doing, and learn how to fight back.

I’m still often confused about what’s going on, and why, but it’s impressive how the bones of Pac-Man fit so neatly into a battle royale experience, with so much thought put into the use of intel and basic strategy that the skill ceiling is currently hard to fathom. Then there’s the fact that you can have the whole game loaded and be in a full match in just a minute or two. The result is both confounding and empowering. When I win, it’s of course due to my skill, and when I lose?

Well, I don’t really know what’s going on, do I?

Pac-Man 99 is out now on Nintendo Switch. The game was reviewed using a download code provided by Bandai Namco. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

I love the new Battle Royale, but just like Tetris 99, it doesn't exactly explain itself. So I thought this one might be helpful if you struggle to understand its mechanics. I will explain how each topic works in one paragraph and then give my thoughts about applicability of strategy.

General Mechanics:

Pellets: Pellets are the small dots across the maze. Eating a set amount of them (roughly 75%) will spawn the fruit. Eating all of them will net you a speed level, displayed on the left side of the screen. If you get an empty maze with no Pellets, you cannot gain a speed level.

Power Pellets: The four bigger dots in the corners of the maze. Eating one will start a Combo and let you eat Ghosts for a duration, that duration decreases over time. Eating another Power Pellet during the effect will extend the Combo. Upon Eating a Power Pellet, all Yellow Jammers despawn (even those that have not fully spawned in yet) while all Red Jammers are frozen in place until its effect ends. The duration will be displayed as a circle in the middle of the screen. Eating ghosts will extend the timers slightly but ONLY if it is almost over at that time.

Sleeping Ghosts: Passing through these will cause them to follow the closest ghost. If any ghost already has sleeping ghosts following them, they will always target that ghost instead, forming a long train. These will never harm you, but you can eat them during a Combo. There is a limit of how many Sleeping Ghosts that can be active at a time, if you reach that then you can't activate any others (they will remain on the map though instead of being wasted).

Fruit: Eating a fruit advances you to the next level, repopulating Pellets, Power Pellets and Sleeping Ghosts. Each Stage will feature one of three patterns: A full maze, a three quarter maze, or an empty maze. Regardless of which pattern you get, it will always include all four Power Pellets and both collumns of Sleeping Ghosts. Eating a Fruit also eliminates ALL Jammers - it is the only way to eliminate Red Jammers.

Medals: Eliminating players will net you medals, displayed on the right side of the screen. You also get all medals that player may have had. These give a multiplier on the amount of Jammers you send out, but one player is not worth one full medal, instead you will see your first medal growing in size before you get your next one. I am not sure about the exact numbers, but if it is like in Tetris 99 then each medal is a 25% increase stacking additively, capping at four medals for a x2 multiplier.

Combos: Each Ghost you eat during an active Power Pellet will raise a number, increasing the amount of Jammers you send to other players. Combos can be carried over between stages, especially if you get an empty maze.

Corner Boosts: Pressing a direction on the d-pad with good timing (slightly before reaching the junction) will cause sparks to appear, giving you a slight speed boost into the corner.

Jammers: Sent by other players (and your own 'Train' Power Up), Yellow Jammers will slow you down for a short while. They will sometimes be a mere nuisance, but sometimes they will allow ghosts to catch up to you or prematurely end your Combo by delaying your route to the next Power Pellet or Fruit. Red Jammers, sent by other players during large Combos, will kill you outright even while you have an active Power Pellet.

General Strategy:

There are two general strategies that are often in conflict with each other: Going for large Combos and going for Full Clears. Full Clearing a maze takes more time than you get even if you eat the four Power Pellets with perfect timing. It is entirely possible to always remain in the same Combo for a long time by only eating as many pellets as needed to advance to the next level. This will net you a couple of kills and no ghost will ever be able to harm you until the Power Pellet duration decreases too much. You will often end up with a 200 Combo, a couple of medals and be virtually invulnerable to all ghost until there are only like 30-40 players left. And while this strategy can pretty much always carry you that far, you will not gain any speed levels and have a hard time in the end game. When going for this tactic, make sure to pick up all sleeping ghosts before advancing the level, they are why you are going for this strategy in the first place. Usually you don't need to chase down the ghosts since you are immune anyway and you can just pick them up when it's convenient to you, but sometimes you may reach the cap of sleeping ghosts at which point you should make an effort to catch them.

The other strategy is clearing the maze to upgrade your speed stat. This will grant you more survivability in the long run, but you won't be able to keep your Combo because Full Clears take time. Also, Red Jammers can be a real pain as they can completely cut you off some pellets in the maze. In general, it is recommended to plan ahead when Full Clearing a maze. If the ghosts are far away, use that opportunity to pick up the pellets that are far away from the safety of Power Pellets first and try to take efficient routes if possible. Also remember that your route has to end where the fruit will spawn once you are finished.

So which strategy is the better one? I think the designers did a good job of rewarding you for doing a mixture of both extremes. And there are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, speed upgrades have diminishing returns as being faster also makes Pac Man harder to control. Secondly, red jammers will often make Full Clears impossible and the only way to get rid of them is to start the next stage early. However, having zero speed upgrade in the end game is miserable as ghosts will easily catch up to you.

Here is my general approach:

Aim for at least two speed levels if possible.

Each upgrade in speed is worse than the one before it. The fewer you have, the more important it is to get one.

If you get a full maze, Full Clears become more of a time investment, maybe go for a Combo instead.

If you see Red Jammers in bad places, you may have to give up on Full Clearing the maze.

If you are not in an active Combo and have a lot of space to breathe, try picking up the last Power Pellet just before clearing the maze. It gives you a head-start on the next one and allows you to go more efficiently for either a Combo or another Full Clear.

Power-Ups:

The (in my opinion) badly named Power-Ups are really trade offs you can engage at will and switch at any time. Edit: Changes only apply upon eating a Power Pallet, thanks for correcting me /u/RidiRidiTwoshoes and /u/10000Pigeons.

Standard (Hotkey Y): This Power-Up brings no upsides, but also no downsides.

Stronger (Hotkey X): This Power-Up increases the amount of Jammers you send to other players but causes your Power Pellets to expire more quickly.

Speed (Hotkey A): This Power-Up increases your movement speed but decreases the amount of Jammers you send to other players.

Train (Hotkey B): This Power-Up increases the amount of Sleeping Ghosts that get activated when you pick them up but will always also spawn Yellow Jammers on your own board when doing so.

Power-Up Strategy:

First of all, you can switch these at no cost, but how much you really want to micromanage this aspect of the game, is up to you. Activating Stronger after you prepared a long train of Ghosts is definitely worth it. If you just switch between Stronger while eating Ghosts and Speed while not eating Ghosts, you are already getting a lot of benefit with only minimal downside.

It should also be noted that Train and Standard are virtually identical when you are not activating Sleeping Ghosts. In general I think Train is a net positive in the early game but a net negative in the late game where Jammers can really mess you up. However, if you are close to the maximum number of ghosts, then Train might also be a pure negative when activating more, so keep that in mind.

In the endgame (3-4 players left), Speed should just be active all the time. It is no longer about getting kills, just try to survive at all costs. I think at this time it is no longer worth micromanaging the Power-Ups.

Other Tips:

Jammers and Ghosts may look large, but they only ever occupy one square of the maze at a time. This becomes especially important when red jammers are frozen by Power Pellets. If they are very close to a junction and seem to overlap it, you will always still be able to pass them unless they stand on the very center tile.

Don't just skip the empty mazes. At least use the down time to pick up the Sleeping Ghosts - then eat a fresh Power Pellet and advance to the next stage.

At the very end, it is all about survival, just forget about Kombos. If you want to go for an endgame gamble, you can designate a 'Kill Screen' to yourself. This means that you approach a new stage without the intention of ever spawning the fruit to the next one. Instead, you just camp at a Power Pellet until the Ghosts come, then activate it, eat the Ghosts and safely go to the next Power Pellet and camp until the Ghosts come. You can delay your own death for a long time this way, but once you run out of Power Pellets, you are pretty much screwed. You are gambling that your opponents all die before this happens. Watch out for Red Jammers though, those can still kill you.

If you get an empty maze in the endgame, stall it. Get some trains, use the Power Pellets to their fullest and once you eat the last one, go for the Fruit right away to spawn new ones.