A twist on the classic arcade game Pac-Man all about the importance of Net Neutrality! Race around the map and collect data packets while avoiding obstacles placed by your greedy ISP!

Move around using WASD or the ARROW keys. Your goal is to collect blue data packets to buffer your content before the playback head catches up. Be careful to avoid throttles placed by your ISP, which slow down your speed. Your ISP can also place down paywalls which require money to pass through ($1 each), or they can block areas completely.

This game was developed in early 2019 as an educational project to explain the importance of Net Neutrality and internet freedom. The concept was initially built off of the idea of blocking and slowing the player down, and the maze-like gameplay of Pac-Man immediately came to mind as a starting point. Taken as a whole, the obstacles were meant to mirror the real-world threats an average consumer (the player) might face without the protections guaranteed by Net Neutrality. In other words, the game (i.e. navigating the internet) is safe and easy when ISPs are not allowed to block certain pathways or slow you down, but it becomes extremely difficult without Net Neutrality.

• Before Pac-Man was chosen as the base game concept, the game Snake was also considered. However, Pac-Man was used instead because the maze-like base level design allowed for more options in interesting level design.
• The color scheme and art style was somewhat inspired by Tron, which also features a digital world and arcade gameplay.
• The map generation code was actually taken from another game, Fish Tank, which is currently still unreleased.
• In order to create maps, Jack and Nathan actually used a pixel editor to draw the maps by hand. Different types of obstacles were indicated by different colors, and the opacity of a given pixel correlated to the order that it would appear in-game.
• At first, much like the original Pac-Man game, the player was actually going to be chased by mysterious pursuers, while their path options would slowly be limited by paywalls, throttles, and more. However, this was scrapped in favor of the video buffering idea, which felt more relatable.

Date

• Change

Date

• Change

Creators: Nathan Jew, Jack Southard

Format: Unity WebGL (New)

Dimensions: 960x600

Completion: Demo