It's been awhile since we heard from Agustin Fernandez a.k.a. "Tembac" - he's apparently suffered from what I call "developer's curse" where you spend so much time and energy making games for an employer that you lose all capacity to develop games for yourself, an afflication which only Rod Humble in his Vice Presidential focus could overcome, and that only for a couple of weekends. Since then he's been free, not in the since of "free beer" but in the since of "hey, I'm fucking free!". He brewed up a poppy dish for Gamma IV, and now he gives us the exegesis of 48 hours worth of jamming. Polygamic Pac-Man poses the question: "what if Pac-man was no mere glutton, but a sex fiend?"
The game follows basic arrow key controls, you dash around the place trying to Pac up the ladies, apparently some of these Ms. Pac-men are at least open to the advances of a one-eyed guy with a top hat. This being the land of the blind, your former lovers try to find you again with their narrow cones of ray-casted sight, easily avoided in small numbers, but the more you seduce the trickier it is to move on to the next one.
After the initial gag wears off you're left with a difficulty curve that spikes asymptotic as the number of potential lovers, n, increases towards about 10. You are left to ponder the endless spiral of a young man's inability to rest, the justiable lack of trust in society, and why some of your lovers start cross-dressing. If you live in Argentina you may ponder why in this country you must put an entire apartment or house up as collateral for a rental contract, a $50k value against maybe 5k of cash-flow, in order to get any apartment - or why girls are justiably jealous of thier lovers, even if said lovers are among the good ones that don't follow Pac-Man's lead. Oh yes, a game can be made in a weekend and induce deep thoughts, but perhaps for not that long and not with much replay value.
Polygamic?
Not sure "polygamic" is an English word. Polygamous? Polyamorous? Albeit Pac-Man's behavior here certainly doesn't comply with the ethical standards of the poly community.
a difficulty curve that doesn't spike asymptoticaly
Actually this game gets easier after the second stage. There is also no "endless spiral", if I didn't know you were a long time reviewer and suspect you didn't actually play all the way through...
On topic of polyamory, Pac-Man isn't that, he's the typical "Casanova" going from one conquest to the next, never looking back (you can't sleep with the same err... pac-girl twice) and is in fact monamorous (is that a word?), just extremely fickle.
Since this was a product of
Since this was a product of the Buenos Aires spoke of the game jam, I suppose they were winging it in more ways than just the design and implementation. I have to agree here that Pac-Man is in it for the thrill and not the love in any form.
You can have an asymptote and then a continuation after that, still has the potential to impale.
Thanks for the review
Thanks for the review Patrick.
We tough that Poligamic Pacman was a catchy name and we didn´t change it. But Casanova Pacman describes the game better.
At the beggining of the development we intended to have love in it. It was one of the casualties of a rushed development :D
Polyamory: The Game
I actually had an idea for a polyamory game a while ago... It would be a time-management game, like Diner Dash. The basic idea is that keeping all of your sweeties happy takes time, and they -really- hate it when you have scheduling conflicts, and you score more points for sustaining as many relationships as possible for as long as possible, but if you get over-scheduled it all comes tumbling down like a juggler with too many balls.