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Play Pac-Man as a first-person horror game

The hungry ghosts of Pac-Man become a lot more frightening when you experience it like a first-person shooter game.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
FPS-Man screenshot
They're coming for you. Screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET

You are caught in a dark maze full of glowing orbs. You're hungry and only the orbs can feed your insatiable appetite. But at each turn, danger lurks. Merciless ghosts haunt your every move. This is the story of Pac-Man.

Freelance game developer Tom Davies has converted Pac-Man into a first-person shooter gaming experience that mines the darker side of the classic. FPS-Man is free to play on gaming site Kongregate.

Maze walls rise up around you and tense music plays, ratcheting it into survival-horror gaming territory. The game really picks up when you munch a power pellet and start running headlong through the maze, looking for ghosties to chow down on.

The immersive viewpoint adds a challenge to the game. You don't have the full top-down map to follow and Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde can sneak up on you, giving only a glow to warn you of their presence.

FPS-Man is no Resident Evil, but it does succeed in creating a much creepier atmosphere than the original game ever attained. It feels both modern and retro at the same time.

(Via BoingBoing)