Mini Review: PAC-MAN Stories

This voice game was one of the first kid-directed Alexa Skills to be released in the UK, about at the same time that the Echo Dot Kids Edition was announced. Since it is such a prestigious, high-profile game, it’s worth taking a closer look. In order not to make this article too long, I’m trying out a new format ‘mini reviews’ with this article — Let me know how you like it!

You see you yellow friend standing there with a big smile on his face — Wakka wakka wakka!

• Game story
  The protagonist visits their friend Pac-Man in the major city of The Maze, and finds out that the city and its surroundings suffer from a garbage problem so enormous that public life has come to a halt. Pac-Man and the protagonist find out that a notorious domestic terrorist caused this mayhem, but they can only defeat him if they gathered enough support from the local community.
  The game definitely attempts to educate kids about keeping their environments clean and to be kind to those in need!
• Game Mechanics
  The game is a linear interactive story (similar to the ‘Mein Auftrag’ Skill game) organized in four chapters with some optional and some mandatory side quests. The optional side quests earn the player items (‘power pellets’), of which the player must have collected a minimal amount to win the final confrontation with the villain.
  All of the story’s nodes are either single-choice or loop nodes.
• Narration
  ‘PAC-MAN Stories’ is an audio drama, told from an abstract second person perspective. The narrator is a female voice actor that talks in a kid-friendly, expressive voice. Except for the protagonist, all characters have their own, characteristic voices, all provided by professional voice actors. Oh, and Pac-Man only ‘talks’ by making his typical ‘Wakka wakka’ sounds.
• Player character
  Following the ‘blank canvas’ approach, this game gives very sparse information about the main character, allowing the player lots of room for identification and ownership. Some facts are used to ‘anchor’ the player in the game world, such as that it’s their first trip alone to The Maze, and them being good friends with Pac-Man.
• Audio effects
  The game uses audio effects very generously: First, it uses a memorable jingle to indicate that the player achieved something in the game (like completing a side quest or a chapter), or that they now have to take action by answering a prompt. Second, it blends rich environmental sounds around and ‘below’ the narration. Sometimes, this backfires by the background noise being so loud that it’s hard to follow the story. And third, the spoken texts from the voice actors are sometimes distorted in a way that reflects their surroundings — Like having an echo when they are in a spacious building like the mall or the town hall.
• Retention factors
  ‘PAC-MAN Stories’ might be one of the longest interactive story voice games I’ve played so far, so a part of the retention might come from the facto alone that kids play one one chapter at a time and come back later for the next one.
  Apart from that, the only major retention factor is that you might not have enough power pellets to defeat the final boss, requiring you to re-play the game and complete more side quests.
  Once you defeated the final boss, there is zero incentive to play the game again (except if maybe you’re a kid, and repetition appeals to you), since the linear nature of the game already revealed every relevant part of its high-quality content to you.
• Ease of use
  The game always gives you very clear options — If you’re an adult, you might find prompts like ‘If you want to go to the mall, say “Go to the mall”!’ a bit patronizing, but for a kid Skill it seems appropriate. Also, the game has a nice way of dealing with more than two options: ‘If you want to do A, say A. If you want to do B, say B. Alternatively, to do C, say C’.
  If you say something the game doesn’t expect, it also gives you a friendly error response, like ‘I’m not sure Pac-Man would approve of that’.
• Summary
  This voice game is nicely tailored to its kid audience, with its lively narration, rich audio experience and explicit prompts. Factors that might be considered a deficit in games directed to teenagers or adults, like a missing sense of autonomy, and few retention factors, probably don’t affect younger kids’ gaming experiences negatively.

With which points do you agree or disagree? If you have kids, how do they like ‘Pac-Man Stories’? And what do you think about this ‘Mini Review’ format? I look forward to your feedback!