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So with this build I had the best run I've ever had, getting to round 163 with a score of 134,719,180. However, I only stopped intentionally because I had been playing non-stop for hours, whereas with previous attempts on previous builds, my runs would end unintentionally. I think the clapperboard needs a nerf. As far as I could tell, the clapperboard not only resets the game speed, but also the ghosts required to get the next power-up and the points required to get an extra life. Because it doesn't reset the effects of the point-multiplying eggs that I had accumulated, it resulted in me earning lives insanely easy, with me getting a life every few dots. This skyrocketed my life count into the hundreds, and it seems the maze size is in part due to your life count at the start of the round, I got massive mazes that slowed the game to a crawl performance-wise, as well as taking forever to load each round. I ended up using the cocktail to negate this, but ultimately the clapperboard resets just made the life system too exploitable for me to really have much challenge anymore. After that run I even stopped playing for a while.

Personally, I'd say simply removing the point-life reset when getting the clapperboard is the way to go towards fixing this.

I disagree with the cocktail item, trading lives for high speed is really useful and you're never at risk of dying immediately after using it, since it doubles as a Power Pellet. And besides, the power-up never spawns with no warning and now you see the 3 its cycles between, so I find it's pretty easy to just avoid if you don't want to take the risk.

I do agree with you on the tall grass gimmick though, the challenge coming from "I can't see shit" just isn't fun. That one is far more egregious to me than the cocktail item.

Hello! I’ve been absolutely loving Pac-Man Forever, and since you’ve mentioned the idea of a version 1.2 in the page for your latest revision, I’d like to give my suggestions. That said, most of these are just aesthetic and cosmetic ideas rather than actual gameplay suggestions. It’s mostly to do with playable characters, but I also have some suggestions for maze themes, and other things.

For playable characters, my most wanted has to be “limbed” Pac-Man (the design seen in promo art and games like Pac-Man World.) This has always been my preferred look for Pac-Man, so it would definitely become a main for me. Maybe you could also do one for Ms. Pac-Man as well. On that note, retro skins for Ms. and even Jr. would be nice as well. Onto actual new characters, the inclusion of Pac-Ranger makes me feel other Pac-People NPCs would be nice inclusions, like Handy-Pac, Clie, Nova, and maybe even throw in some Ghostly Adventures characters like Cylindria and Spiral. Maybe Toc-Man as well if you don’t plan on making him an enemy. More classic Namco characters would also be nice to see, like Gil from Tower of Druaga, Galaxip from Galaxian, Solvalou from Xevious, Valkyrie, and maybe even relatively newer characters like Mr. Driller or The Prince from Katamari. But of all of these, Gil is a perfect fit. Another character I think would be cool albeit somewhat unorthodox is a playable ghost. Maybe the way their palette works could be a little different from the enemy ghosts to distinguish them more. As for who this ghost would be, I’d go with Orson. He’s pretty much the only major ghost from the series to not have a role already, and him being playable would fit his role as an ally in Pac-Man World 3. He also has a unique eye shape in World 1 and the Re-Pac games, so that’s another thing to help him stand apart from enemy ghosts. New color palettes would be nice, but something I would really love to see is custom color palettes. Even if it’s something that has to be made outside the game itself. On that note, custom characters would be another nice addition. That said, I totally understand if something like that is difficult to implement and outside of the scope of this project. Also, I think color palettes shouldn’t be limited to one player each during multiplayer. I understand it for Versus mode, since the Buddies take after the color of their player, but I don’t see any reason this limitation has to exist in Arcade mode. I mostly just want this so I can have normal yellow Pac-Man alongside normal yellow Ms. Pac-Man. Also Rally X Racer should be renamed to its canonical name: “My Car”

While playing as Ms. Pac-Man, I notice that the sound effects don’t change to the ones found in her home game. That’s totally fine, but it did give me an idea: Adding a third customization option with the characters and palettes: sound effects. There would be options to use the sound effects from different games, like Ms., Jr., Mania, Arrangement, etc. There could even be sound effect options for different Namco games to fit the Dig Dug or Galaga skins. This wouldn’t effect all sound effects like ones that don’t have an equivalent, but just the main ones like eating dots and fruits and ghosts, the ghost sirens, dying, and the start jingle (aside from level-specific ones)

As for maze themes, I think a must-have would be a spooky Halloween theme, since that tends to be a level trope for a lot of Pac-Man games. It could have music from World 1 & 2 as well as Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness. One that could be fairly easy to implement is a Ms. Pac-Man theme, basically an alternate version of the classic maze theme the game always starts with, just with different colors, the walls filled in, and maybe the checkerboard background could be polka dots or something. The music could also be Ms.-related songs like Cleopactra, and the Ms. Pac-Man room from Namco Museum Vol. 3. Other maze ideas I have are a carnival inspired by the Funhouse from Pac-Man World or Sweet Land from Pac ‘n Roll, a space station inspired by Pac-Man World’s space world and Pac-Attack PS1’s aesthetic, and a theme based on Tower of Druaga.

I think some of the existing maze themes could use some more music, mostly the ones that use only one song. The Block Town maze could use variants of the songs like Pac-Mania Room from Namco Museum Vol. 5, or the Pac & Pal remix from the DS version of Pac-Man Vs. The Mappy maze could use songs from Mappy Arrangement, Hopping Mappy, and the Mappy theme from Pac ‘n Jump. I think the Wild West theme should have Wild West 1 & 2 from Pac-Man: Adventures in Time because those songs SLAP. Lastly, this is very subjective, but I think the Tree Tops maze should use the original versions of the World 2 songs, either alongside or in place of their Re-Pac versions, as I feel they sound better. Again, very subjective, but regardless of which version you choose, I definitely feel the credit for the songs should go to the original composer, David Logan, rather than or alongside Masashi Sugiyama and Meiko Tamada, who just did the Re-Pac arrangements. Speaking of music, a “sound test” in the menu would be nice, maybe even allowing us to set any song as the menu music.

Finally, one of the only gameplay ideas I have is to add Miru as a “ghost” that can appear. She could work like she did in Pac & Pal, stealing Power Pellets and upgrade power-ups and bringing them to the ghost house where they disappear. Another idea is that since one of the clover’s random effects is to change your color palette, I think having another effect changing the player’s character would be fun. It could even replace the color change effect since you already get that from the mushroom. I also ask that if you end up adding another upgrade power-up that you make it the iconic pretzel from Ms. Pac-Man.

So that’s all the suggestions I’ve got. Sorry this ended up being so long, but I’ve just been having an absolute blast with this game and when that happens I just tend to get ideas for more things. Of course, I’m not expecting these suggestions to actually make it into the next update, and I’m more than satisfied with the game as it is now. You and everyone else on the dev team seriously did a fantastic job, this has become one of my favorite Pac-Man maze games on the same level of the all-time GOATs like Pac-Man Arrangement. This is the kind of Pac-Man I’ve been missing from the official maze games from far, far too long.