While I was twerking around on itch.io out of boredom, I came across a Pac-Man fangame by one of my favorite game developers, whom I will not be naming for a reason.
This game was called Pac-Frenia, or at least, that’s what I will be calling it, so that you don’t find the name of the author of the game (P.S. If you already knew the author, please do not say his name or the name of that game). I will be going to the gameplay segment now.
Opening up the game takes us to a pixel-font title screen with the title saying the name of the game, while stuff seen in the game started to fade in the place of each letter one by one, five milliseconds, before fading out another millisecond, whose animation got faster every 5 seconds.
Same went for the bottom paragraph-sized text saying “PRESS SPACE BUTTON TO START”.
The premise went as a cutscene that depicts the fact that our little yellow-filled pizza man has been suffering from schizophrenia ever since childhood, and has been isolated from his wife and child as a result, to the point he had to go to the maze he always goes to for his family to spend time alone, but Ms. Pac Man and Jr. find out and decide to search the maze for him. That is where the first level begins, in a first person view, and WASD to control.
All I had to do was find a rectangle-shaped area before either Ms. or Jr. Pac find out, all while having hallucinations in my mind, and I don’t mean I have them, I mean Pac, the character I was currently playing as, though aside that, the hallucinations go at times, so it was somewhat easy for me to catch up to that area without my family seeing.
The cutscene after finding the area reveals it is actually the ghosts’ hideout, which the dot-eating man finds out after 3 seconds. Ms. Pac does find him there, but because it was just a cutscene, there wasn’t a game over, yet. Pixel bubbles appear for the dialogue given:
Ms: Oh, Pac, what are you doing there, and why are you even there??
Pac: …
Ms: Hello? Uh, hello? Are you okay?
Pac: …Mhm…
Ms: What’s wrong?
Pac: …ehh…
Just then, the ghosts woke up, and saw Pac and Ms. Pac. They both found out once Blinky said the line below.
Blinky: Look, there they are!
Pinky: Oh, man, I can’t wait to GE-A-T them!
Ms: Oh, Pac, what about Jr? …We need to go…NOW! had Ms. Pac said, before they both rushed out of the ghosts’ hideout, at the same time.
Blinky: Hey, you won’t get away!
The second level started by this point, while Pac Man was acting as a scaredy-cat, which was to escape to the outside of what seemed to be the maze becoming longer and scrambled into anything Pac had seen before.
The ghosts, Pac, and Ms. Pac (not even Jr., whom Ms. Pac took alongside her) did not change shape, but the maze continuously did, a la Level 256. The glitched parts made it hard to escape the maze or focus attention, thus making it easier for the ghosts to catch me. And in the middle of that, I thought of grabbing the key, but it was actually part of the hallucinations I, as Pac, had.
..It took at least four tries to finish the second level..Pac finally escaped the maze, but not before the other half of the maze got infected with the glitch.
The ghosts were somewhat able to get out of the maze, because they’re ghosts, and just when they were about to get him, Pac felt nothing, and the ghosts somehow were not there.
Pac (in his mind): Was it just me..?
The maze, the one that Pac would always chomp down for his family, started to distort into an incomprehensible shape, zooming out three seconds, then fading away, as he [Pac] felt nothing but a teardrop from his eye. He slowly reached his family house, before slamming the door shut.
The third level was simple, go to sleep, but not in his family bed, instead, on the couch. The view switched to the same one seen on the original arcade game (WASD still worked). And as Pac entered to his dreams, sunk into the couch, the background faded to the 256 level maze mentioned before.
Pac: …Hmm? (Is this…the maze..?)
Blinky: There he is again!
Pinky: Go on and run, all you want, but there is no escape! And…become one of us!
Inky: *gulp* I..guess I can..DO IT!
Clyde: Uh, I’m not too sure about chasi-
Blinky: YOU DO NOT WANT TO CHASE HIM?! THEN BECOME LIKE HIM, STAY OUT OF OUR SIGHT!
Clyde was kicked out of the maze with Blinky’s fist, but Pac would start running from their sight.
Blinky: Look! He’s getting away, but we can still do it! AFTER HIM!
This was the fourth level, run from the ghosts, but again, there is no escape. It switched back to first person again, and the now-three ghosts and the maze became more aggressive as usual. I could hear the screaming on the music by the creator of the game, along with him saying many negative words loudly on his microphone. The background was a picture of a man’s hands on the wall, with teardrops stemming from the same man who has the hands.
The glitched maze also seemed to now have negative pictures that may have been taken by the creator, in place of what was previously there.
The only way to win the fourth level is if the ghosts caught you, which I let the ghosts did, for my gameplay.
Pac woke up, frightened by the nightmare he just had. It was also the sunset, for some reason in the morning. But it became clear, he couldn’t take care of his family anymore, he couldn’t collect food for his family anymore, he didn’t enjoy going to the maze anymore.
Ms: My darling, why didn’t you sleep on our bed..?
Pac: ..ehh…
The cutscene faded into a timelapse of Pac’s deterioration of his mental state on the left side, and another of Ms. Pac’s decreasing temper on the other side. Finally, it came to a halt where Pac had a beard of dots on a faded brown oval over his mouth, with lots of pizza boxes on the couch, and a house now messy (dustbunnies, trash, food crumbs, etc.), and Ms. Pac in her angriest state.
Ms: I’ve had enough of your laziness! You don’t do anything anymore, how are we going to eat now?! Heck, Jr. keeps crying every now and then! I’m leaving you, “darling”, or should I say, “NEIN (NAYN)”-ling?!
Ms. Pac took Jr. with her, before saying: Goodbye, Pac-Man. This is the last time I see you. before slamming the door shut, and a sound of a car vrooming away played.
The house became a black void, much like a black hole, as Pac-Man turned 90 degrees upright. Level 5 came, but this time, there were no instructions, and the only thing were a bunch of scribbles that felt like they were drawn on tissue.
The sound in the background changed to a man’s panting, with one of the man’s hand from before during the previous level, and the artstyle wasn’t pixel art anymore, but scratchy lines of fanart.
Touching Pac for a response, I saw that his belly was smudged, so I tried rubbing the mouse while holding the left mouse button, which made him smudged on every part. And finally, the darkness was brought down, back to the pixel style.
This made me return to the title screen, but it was now the same scratchy artstyle, and the sound was of that same man that was panting earlier, now gagging and choking. Half a minute would pass, and the glitch, the same one on the maze, would fill up the screen, as radio noise took the focus of the ears, which forcefully closed the game when the waiting struck 40 seconds later.
Yeah, sadly, the creator’s sister announced that her brother, the one who created that game, had passed away by a self-gunshot, which was influenced by schizophrenia, the minute I finished the game, which is why I will not be saying who the developer is, not even his itch.io username.
The game was deleted from the platform by his sister for the sake of his family, and I’m not going to be sending my copy to the public, but maybe you can email his sister, if you know the creator’s name, that you have a copy of the game, though I recommend not to redistribute it.
To the creator’s sister, please tell me if I should delete this post by email, which is gamerfrieandsgames@gmail.com.
Rest in peace, to the person who developed the game. I am offering my condolences to your sister and your family.
Rewrite by M.isAway
Based on this creepypasta LafawndaPasta ranted on: https://youtu.be/T3T4Cc9a9yQ?si=-16SqWGc3UyRCR2j