by Pac-Man is in the midst of a renaissance right now; between multiple video games built to support an upcoming cartoon launch, the character is headed in a lot of different directions at once. Pac-Man Dash! is his latest iOS incarnation, and it’s an endless runner with some enjoyable gameplay mechanics — and also a few missteps in its approach to in-app purchases.
At its core, Pac-Man Dash! is an old-school platformer, and the classic series elements have been remixed and given new context. Power pellets (now called “cookies”) are collectible currency that double as the trigger for power-ups, while ghosts dot the landscape, but they always run away the moment they see you. Eating a ghost adds a few seconds to your time counter, and sets of missions task you with chomping down a certain number of ghosts or cookies, or run a lengthy distance before time runs out.
Some of these may sound like standard endless-runner tropes, but the execution is pulled off surprisingly well. After a too-easy start in which we actually finished missions without touching the screen at all, the game hit a comfortable stride. Pac-Man’s speed, coupled with level layouts that emphasize hills, make it almost resemble a classic Sonic the Hedgehog game. Timing jumps and going for a perfect line to maximize your cookies and ghosts actually proves immensely satisfying.
But then you hit the Stamina limit. Pac-Man Dash! is drenched in in-app purchase hooks, but the Stamina bar feels the most out-of-place. It limits you to 10 stage attempts at a time, including retries. After that, you can either wait for them to refill (one Stamina per 15 minutes), or buy a pack for a buck. Since some of the later stages are difficult without purchases, you’re likely to burn through Stamina rather quickly. Action clocks are a remnant of Facebook social games, but even there they were mostly a mechanic in sim-style games. Slipping it into an iOS runner just breaks the flow we expect from this genre. Other purchasable boosts are slightly easier to swallow; some unlocks new stages, while others let you add extra time to your counter (plus there’s a cookie doubler ability).
A game so loosely based on a classic franchise and clearly engineered to help launch a cartoon could carry a lot of baggage. Instead Pac-Man Dash! proves to be a smartly designed platformer, making for a worthwhile, short-lived diversion. It just took the wrong lessons from the shifting face of the iOS free-to-play market, and constantly interrupts the fun for its own financial interests.
The bottom line. Pac-Man Dash! is a surprisingly tight platformer, but it gets bogged down by an unfortunate pace-killing stamina meter.
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