Future-Dots Games

Also, I’m like 90% sure “speed” does NOT double your movement speed. I think it might increase your speed 2 levels, and it was a translation mistake in the trailer.

I’m getting up to speed 4 or 5 every game. Switching to stronger to eat your last line and knock out an opponent is very satisfying.

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hard to believe pac man is 99 years old already

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It’s in pac years

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Getting top 5 pretty consistently now, but I only have one more win.

This game is pretty addictive. It’s legit a good Pacman game with a lot of risk-reward mechanics. I think it’s very well designed!

The end rounds with the red ghosts are brutal and really test your on-the-fly routing ability.

Burning a speed in the midgame for a strength attack usually nets me like 4 kills which I can leverage into an strong endgame, but sometimes you have to bail on a strategy you already picked because the board state changed suddenly.

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I’m farming speed too well and I make mistakes late game because I’m moving too fast. In the top 20 I think I need to do some combination of:

  • stay in standard mode when I have a ton of speed (e.g. don’t keep picking speed mode) so I don’t go uncontrollably fast
  • use strength to eat speed
  • play very defensively and stop trying to do even more full clears to get more speed

Yeah I stop once I get 4 speed now. Maybe I’ll go 5 if there aren’t any red pacs yet. I prefer to go as fast as possible but the biggest obstacle for me at higher speeds are actually ghosts who go too fucking slow. Worst way to die is bumping into a slowpoke ghost from behind.

Is there a way to increase your speed aside from full clears?

I placed 1st 3 times in 4 matches yesterday and that was nice. Didn’t hit 1st again after that but I think I generally hit top 10 before fucking up, sometimes from shit I did not see coming. Wish the game had replays cuz this is one of the rare games where I’d actually study them.

Think it 's fantastic overall, hope I remain loving it.

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I’m having your first place streak except with 11th place instead

I am very bad at identifying new signifiers with my old pac-man/pacman ce/pacman ce dx brain (specifically all white outlined objects). I’m also working against the instincts I’ve formed from previous games (grabbing the fruit too early). Hasn’t stopped me from placing top 5 a few times!

Once I get better at identifying stuff peripherally I can focus a bit more on powerup/attack strategy.

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i can place top ten no problem, but that number one spot still eludes me…

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SOUND THE HOOTER

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Pacman 99 is dope. I’ve only won once but I am generally in the top 25, which I’m okay with.

My current strategy is:

  1. Speed only until 4 speed, then switch to train
  2. Counter Always
  3. Don’t pick up ghost trains at all until I’m at level 4 speed. They slow me down and confuse me lol
  4. After switching to train, start stalling somewhat - don’t move the round ahead until necessary, and make sure to get all the little ghosts
  5. Eat trains when convenient, but stay near power pellets
  6. If on round 8 or 9, try to blast through as quickly as possible since the pellet times are so low, and round 10 is easier

It works okay, it mostly relies on me being able to focus through all the distractions and not just run face first into a red jammer or a ghost. I’m sure there are better strategies but this one has a good set of rules to keep me in line, and tends to keep the field clear

I like this game!

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got 3rd place, but then played two more rounds and didn’t even make it to 50. clyde got me both times. turns out any tiny distraction will throw me off so bad that i immediately lose

Got another number 1, hooray.

I think that most people (let’s say 80%) stick to the Random strategy. I’ve noticed that whoever is targeting me at the beginning doesn’t change unless they die or there’s less than 50 people playing. That means that if I start with 7 people targeting me, I’m just going to have a very rough game. Conversely if I start with 1 person targeting me, it might be an easy one.

Also leads me to believe that people don’t really think about this game as much as I do - I’ve been refining my strategies with every game, but I think most folks are satisifed…just playing it.

Anyway current strategy is pretty much the same BUT I’ve been changing to Random strategy if less than 5 people are targeting me (random is always 5 people and I wanna send as many jammers as possible), then switching back to Counter in the top 20. Hunter and Knockout seem…mostly useless to me, since I don’t want to get countered by the person with the most KOs, and I don’t have any idea what the criteria for Knockout is.

Also been switching to the Speed bonus for rounds 8 and 9 since they’re so brutal and I just need to end them as quickly as possible. I never use Strength because I think 4 speed is the bare minimum at the end and I don’t want to lose it.

Most of my losses come from getting greedy with ghost trains and not being near enough to a power pellet to dispel the jammers, and I get murdered by ghosts. Red jammers are mostly just restrictive to movement as long as I’m paying attention, so the real problem remains the ghosts.

Other observations:

  • If one quadrant is empty, the fruit appears after eating most of one lower quadrant. It’s actually the outside dots and none of the annoying ones:

  • If all quadrants are full, then you have to eat something like 75% of the two lower quadrants before the fruit appears. I haven’t figured out the exact best pattern for this.
  • If all quadrants are blank, you can’t turn around immediately to get the fruit - you gotta turn a corner then come back
  • I’m 99% certain that the ghost behavior is exactly the same as the original game.
  • GHOSTS CAN TURN AROUND. I guess this is also true in the original game but I never noticed it before. Blinky straight up 360 no scoped me once.
  • Jammers become mobile when around 50 people are left - not sure if it’s actually timed or not.
  • Stationary jammers can start moving suddenly at this point as well.
  • Not sure when red ones start to appear but it seems to be ~30 people left. This all says to me it’s rarely useful to eat ghosts until there’s 35 or less people

I think that’s all the interesting stuff.

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OH and don’t go to the Pacman 99 Reddit it’s full of shitheads

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r/Gameboy is pretty chill. It’s just people posting pictures of their Gameboys.

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who says dots-game can’t be an action platformer? nobody said that. anyway, Annalynn is $4 on sale

collect gold coins while avoiding snakes

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That is a hecka good character design

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Finally got around to playing Pac-Man 99

I love the little ghosts on the sides looking like jellyfish. Those malevolent Pacmen spirits are something I’m into, I‘m into enemies that don’t kill you directly, was thinking about the baby goomba spores in smb3 but those kind of suck
I love crazy noises, I miss miss Pac-Man, I love the sound of bouncing fruit

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