You already know that this isn’t the real Pac Man because he never runs from a fight. That said, it’s always cool to see the franchise getting new games even if this one is locked on the Apple Arcade for now. While I’ve got the free trial it seemed like a good idea to jump in though. I think the concept is cool but the control scheme doesn’t work amazingly on the phone. (Disclaimer that these games can all be played with a controller but I didn’t bother setting it up. If you’re on the Arcade then you should work well even on mobile right?

There isn’t a story here so mainly what you’re doing is playing through a bunch of stages to see just how skilled you are. There is also a heavy online component as well of course. The gameplay is mainly similar to the classic game but then it introduces a lot of new control gimmicks and objectives. For example in one style you have to stop the other Pac Men and the way to do that is to literally fire off energy blasts. Pretty cool right? Well the concept is cool even if it doesn’t feel like Pac Man. Other times you have to eat all of the ghosts instead of getting all of the pellets.

There is a decent amount of variety here but because of that I do think the fundamentals are not as strong as the original Pac Man. Let me explain. The first Pac Man is a fairly simple game through and through but one that has one of the most addicting gameplay styles of all time. This one is so busy trying to top it that it loses the plot. I think sticking to the original and adding some kind of basic plot would have worked so much better. In some ways I would say to think of this more like a Pac Man Party kind of approach. It has a lot of styles to it but none of them are super developed.

Getting to the control scheme, it’s also not very smooth. The game opts to ditch the typical motion stick used for titles like Sonic, TMNT, and Mega Man in place of having to swipe on the screen in order to move. The problem is that this takes longer to do of course and so it puts you in a rather difficult spot. So you end up dying more and further realize that this doesn’t work so well. There’s no excuse because I’ve seen games work well with tons of different gameplay styles. Me personally I tend to find that collecting and matching games end to work best on mobile with their consistency but there are also many great platformers and such on here.

So the game gets a bit of a thumbs down there. Ultimately there just isn’t a ton of content to keep you busy. The missions can last you for a little bit but there’s not a lot of incentive to actually playing through them. This is where even a short story could have helped out a lot. So the game is totally reliant on you knowing someone who also owns the game so you can play with friends and since a lot of people don’t own the Apple Arcade as it is, it’s not the greatest selling point imaginable.

The graphics are pretty good though. Nothing super top tier or anything like that but they hold their own. The soundtrack is also decent although not the most memorable. On a technical level the game certainly suffices and is ultimately just let down by a rather lackluster main gameplay style. Even if this was on console I don’t think it would have done all that well as the Championship Edition does all of this but in a far better way with more enticing rewards at the ready. This is sort of like a miniature version of that.

Now, the final question is should they keep the energy blasts or not? Me personally? I’d say to keep it in, it is a pretty interesting mechanic but maybe instead of that being the power for a whole level, let it be an attack you can use once per life. That will keep people from spamming it and also add a little more strategy into the equation. Yes, this sounds like a good idea to me.

Overall, Pac Man: Party Royale is a game that had a lot of potential but I feel like it’s not really at the level where it should be. I didn’t play this one for very long next to the other mobile titles as it got stale quickly. I think it’s fair to say that it might be the weakest of the Pac Man titles all around. Hopefully they give this another try at some point because I think the next great Pac Man game might just be around the corner! They just gotta put a little more oomph into the next one.

Overall 5/10