Pacman Game (Covid-19 Version)

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  Oops...Coronavirus caught Pacman :( Pacman lost

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  When Pacman eats all the dots, the vaccine will appear (top-left corner)

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  Pacman got vaccinated! Hooray!

Inspiration

Pacman is one of the most loved games worldwide, and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, my goal is to re-create the game in the theme of the pandemic. With the game, I hope to demonstrate the feelings of most people in the pandemic: worries, striving forward, hopes and strengths through the game.

What it does

Pacman (Covid-19 version) is modified from the original Pacman game of Namco Limited. Instead of Pacman versus Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde monsters, they now face the maze chase from the Coronaviruses. When Pacman eats all of the yellow dots, a vaccination will appear, and they only win if they get the vaccination.

How I built it

I used Repl.it as the running interface, and leveraged Pygame as the programming language since their libraries are exceptionally flexible and easy to support 2D arcade games. In the pygame library, I used image sublibrary to form images of the characters in the game. I utilized surface, font and display sublibraries to set up game settings such as grid, walls, colors, font, background, etc., and sprites to create game objects and contents. I also used Adobe Photoshope to create the character icons with transparent background.

Challenges I ran into

• Time restrictions: At first, I would want to build this Pacman with more real experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic. There is a home for Pacman to hide from the viruses, but the food bank will decrement every time Pacman goes inside the house, and they have 20 seconds to go grab the food appearing at random places before losing the game. However, due to time restriction, these features were not implemented.
• Computer Software: As I did this project solo, I was not able to make it into and .exe file that could be run in Windows operating system.

Accomplishments that I am proud of & What I learned

Throughout this project, I have learned to leverage Pygame libraries, fine-tuned my Python skills, made up a game logic related to the theme of Covid-19, and gone out of my comfort zone to make my first game.

What's next for Pacman Game (Covid-19 Version)

I would like to add these features to Pacman (Covid-19 Version)

• Add home and food features (as above)
• Design animations for Pacman and viruses
• Add 2 vaccines (instead of 1) to match the real world
• Make executable softwares that can be run on Windows/MacOS

Built With

• atom
• photoshop
• pygame
• python
• repl.it