Life Size Pac-Man

This game was submitted by Dustin Harrison who also submitted Soccer Stomp!

Quickie:

It's Pac-Man but life size! And it glows in the dark, how cool is that?

Pro Tips:

  1. Play Dubstep Pacman music
  2. Go big or go home - the higher the production value on this one, the better.
  3. Do a dry run with your leaders and make sure you've got all the kinks worked out

Supplies:

  • There are many variables to building this game so supplies are going to be up to you
  • Projector/Screen and PPT Countdown
  • FOR THE MAZE use string lights, rope lights, glow in the dark duct tape, or we used PVC pipe we also use for our human foosball and then outlined it with string lights. [We didn’t use the lights in the middle of the maze because the gym was just slightly lit enough to see enough and we didn’t want them trampling the lights.]
  • MUSIC. The original PACMAN music was a little boring so I got the dubstep version.
  • GLOWSTICKS are used as PAC-DOTS and we put two sticks together for one circle or PAC-DOT. We bought for a maze half a gym size and got 4 of these.
  • [We also bought some large glow stick balls for the middle as extra points.
  • 4 head lamps for leaders or students to be ghosts. The amount of ghosts should be determined by the size of your maze. 

Set Up:

Create a maze. Make sure there is an opening for each team on the outside of the maze and a middle opening for your ghosts to start. Black out your area so you know how much light you’ll need for the game. [the glow sticks will help identify the maze as well]. About 30 minutes before the game is going to start, crack the glowsticks and set them up evenly in the maze

How to Play:

- Divide into even teams, however many you want. It really depends on our size, but we went with 4 teams.

- Locate each team outside their opening in the maze.

- When the countdown [we did 3 minutes on a projector screen] begins each team may send ONE student in at a time to collect PAC-MAN dots. This player must either hop on one leg or you can tie their legs together otherwise the games goes way too fast. Leaders/Ghosts are only allowed to walk to tag students.

- Once a student is tagged by a Ghost they are immediately out, the next student in line for their team enters, and the player who is out brings back all their PAC-MAN dots to be counted at the end.

- Once the countdown ends or the PAC-MAN dots run out count up a tally.

- After each round set up again and rotate the teams around the maze. This helps keeps it fair cause some openings were easier than others to grab PAC-DOTS.

- We did the about 3 rounds.

I thought of this game 5 days before our youth group night and it went awesome, but I’m sure you guys could make it so much more fun and I’d love to hear if you have an idea. One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to change the atmosphere so the PAC-MAN could then chase the Ghosts like in the game.

From Keith: My suggestion for "changing the atmosphere" so the PAC-MAN is able to chase the ghosts (like in the game) is to use glow balls or a special glow stick - when a player picks one up have him yell "PAC ATTACK" and at that moment the game changes for 15 seconds - lights turn on, the music turns to normal PAC-MAN music (rather than dubstep), the other players on the board freeze and the ghosts (leaders/students with headlamps) must also freeze (otherwise, whilst running away from one PAC MAN they would simply conveniently position themselves around the others. PAC MAN can either continue picking up glowstick rings or may tag ghosts (who return to the middle once they're tagged until time is up) or they can do both - pick up rings and tag ghosts. I'd still have PAC MAN only move via hopping on one leg. The benefit is that ghosts can't tag him and that no one else can pick up glow stick rings during this time. It's just my guess but I assume 15 seconds would seem long enough.