Video Game / Pac-Man Monsters

A puzzle/RPG hybrid released on mobile devices on March 31, 2014, by Bandai Namco Entertainment through the iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store, Pac-Man Monsters is a simple concept:

Use your team of creatures (including fairies, demons, and of course, Pac-Man–based monsters) to fight increasingly difficult enemy waves and bosses that are wreaking havoc in Pac-Land. Obtain coins and various wonder eggs that can be used to upgrade monsters you have or obtain more monsters. In addition to Eggs, seeds must be obtained to evolve your various party members.

In battle, the bottom half of the screen becomes a sort of Tetris-esque puzzle game. players are given a certain amount of turns to wipe across stacked blocks, guiding Pac-Man to eat power pellets to allow your monsters to attack, and use special abilities. Different enemies only give the player so many turns, however, so one has to plan what path Pac should take and what monsters need to attack.

Special quests and monsters become more and more available to the player, allowing them to get more rare monsters without having to really level grind for seeds. Unfortunately, the online service has ended, with its game's removal, on March 9th, 2015.

Pac-Man Monsters exhibits:

• Art Shift: Most Pac-Man games, though different in their own ways, generally have a bright toy-like feel between them. Pac-Man Monsters on the other hand, has the same artist as Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (noticeable in some designs, such as Grand Prix Queen Fairy), with sharper edges, darker colorations, shadows, and so on.
  • The style seems to be based on the character style vote shown here, mixing various aspects of B, C, and D's styles. Many people have confused the poll for Ghostly Adventures' artstyle, which came out far too late to have affected Ghostly Adventures' artstyle, as the final Ghostly Adventures designs had already long been decided and finalized.
• Crossover: It had several with other Namco titles.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Water (blue), Tree (green), and Fire (red) form the obvious trio of what affects what. Dark (purple) and Light (yellow) cause great damage to each other in particular.

• Fragile Speedster: Black and White Cait Siths and their relatives.
• The Goomba: Gremlins, which evolve into the much more powerful Wendigos after being leveled up.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Though it's interestingly different from other Mon genre games, eggs are dropped occasionally by enemies, and from there, you have a chance of having a new creature when hatched or be left unhatched and used to upgrade your monsters' level. This does not allow them to evolve however, and so one also has to collect seeds to achieve that.
• Level Ate: Pac-Land itself, as seen/described in the opening cutscene and some levels.
• Ms. Fanservice: Many female monsters are pretty shapely when evolved from a lower tier monster (Witch monster's "Queen" evolutions), and some are like this even before then (Valkyrie and Black Valkyrie). There's also the Egyptian Fairy that summons monsters for you whenever you get a "Lucky Bonus".
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The initial team has an elemental Pac-Man-looking character, Pinky, Clyde, and two elemental Fairies.
• Shout-Out: Various monsters in this game are loving tributes to earlier Pac-Man titles. Here are a few examples. See
  • Anubis and its evolution, Anubis Rex, based on That One Level / That One Boss of the same name from the first Pac-Man World game.
  • Killer Frog is from Pac-Man World 2, but instead of Clyde driving it, a random blue ghost is the pilot.
  • Spooky, the main villain of Pac-Man World 2, appears as an event King Boss named Ghost Spooky. He can also be hatched from a King Boss egg in a weaker form, simply called Spooky.
  • Golvis, the main villain of Pac 'n Roll, is given a pre-evolution, Funny Golvis.
• Wendigo: Surprisingly coming in all elemental forms and evolving from Gremlin Mooks, Wendigo's here are large mammal/reptile combos that are powerful in battle.

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