I’m sure you’ve seen news reports and other articles regarding the sudden boom in casual gaming, and how this new genre of games is taking the web by storm. As a big casual gamer myself, I feel I must stress that this is FAR from a new market. Casual games were the original market, with games like Pac-man and Qix, so when I see a game like Pac-Xon that is a complete throwback to the roots of casual games, I feel I need to give it some love.

Pac-Xon uses classic arcade sprites from the pacman games, and uses some pac elements like power pellets and fruit, but for the most part, this game is all about drawing boxes and trapping things, just like the gameplay of Qix. There is nothing fancy about this game at all, just pure timeless gameplay. It’s f*ing fun!

The art isn’t pretty (unless you are from 1981), but if you are playing a game with classic pacman characters, it looks exactly like it should.

The sound is also sub-par by today’s standards, but keeps the game feeling like a long lost 80’s arcade title.

The gameplay is all that matters. If you’ve played any box and trap game like this, you will pick it up right away. What makes it a bit different is the degree to wich they tied in pacman game elements.

MOST of the ghosts in the level float freely in the black space, and if they hit you or any unconnected line you are making you die. Other ghosts cling to the edge of your boxes and are able to kill you even if you are on the ’safe-zone’ boxes. There are also ghosts that ONLY travel in the safe-zone boxes, and larger ghosts that eat away at the boxes as they touch them.

The tie-in to classic pacman games is that if you eat a power pellet, all the ghosts turn blue and can’t hurt you. You can even ‘eat’ them, but they respawn almost instantly. Additional pac-items are bonus fruits that pop up from time to time that actually give you a bit of a speed boost.

The overall goal is to fill at least 80% of the screen with blue boxes, trapping the ghosts in small spaces. If you can fill more than the 80% you get bonus points, and so on and so fourth.

This modern game is definitely appealing to the web’s casual gamers, but it also represents the old school and reminds us that, new or old, gameplay is all that matters.

[ Play Pac-Xon ]