Quoridor Pac-Man Review

Quoridor Joins the Pac

Popular abstract strategy game Quoridor gets a nostalgic reskin with this cute loveable Pac-Man version providing players with all the fun of normal Quoridor plus the added bonus of high quality Pac-Man pieces. Thus also enabling the player a choice between classic rules using the four ghosts as the pawns OR playing a variant version of the game to incorporate Pac-Man.

Quoridor is relatively quick, lasting around 20 minutes per game. It is played on a 9×9, 81 square grid where pawns are placed at the centre space of one edge of the board (opposite each other if playing 2 players). To win the game players must get their pawn to the opposite side of the board before their opponent. On each player’s turn they can move their pawn orthogonally 1 space in any direction or place a wall tile. These wall tiles are strategically placed in an attempt to hinder your opponent’s progress and/or support your own pawn’s ambitions to reach the opposite side of the board. Wall tiles are distributed evenly among players and once placed walls cannot be moved or removed so players really need to think wisely before placing. Because players are making choices on whether to move or place a wall and where to place their walls; each game can end up looking very different to the last. It is important to note that the walls cannot be placed in a way that completely blocks off the other player, and this is consistent across all variants.

However, when playing the variant version, there is an initial set up which will always be the same each game. Ghosts are all placed at the centre space of the edges of the board with Pac-Man starting in the middle with some walls already placed close the power pellets, as shown in the image below.

Pac-Man moves two spaces orthogonally each turn trying to reach all four power pellets before running out of all 3 of his lives. The ghosts, like in the original arcade game chase Pac-Man around trying to catch him, each time they do, he loses a life. Their objective is simple… run Pac-Man out of his lives before he gets to each all 4 power-pellets. Pac-Man’s objective is clear… eat the power-pellets! When Pac-Man consumes a power-pellet he immediately gets to move 3 spaces and if he goes through or lands on a ghost during this turn he eats the ghost and it is removed from the board. Should Pac-Man get caught by a ghost however, he loses a life token and the board is reset (minus any eaten power-pellets) with any removed ghosts returning to their original spots.

Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde

Original Quoridor is a 2-4 player game whilst the Pac-Man variant brings in the ability to have a 5th player. However, let’s be honest, this game is best played as a duel! Really, it’s just little Pac versus those 4 mean ghosties trying to ruin Pac’s day. To play more than 2 players the extra players take on the roles of different ghosts. Which I guess is fine, but you’d really need that ghost element to be co-operative and Pac-Man is going to hear all that discussion and your strategy unless you’re quiet about it. Also, if you’re playing a ghost and you get eaten you’re out of the game until Pac-Man is caught and the game resets and that can be a bit boring. So I like 1 player playing the ghosts and the other playing Pac-Man really making it a 2 player game.

Waka waka waka

Whilst at AireCon NorthWest I got to play a different variant of Pac-Man which, if it doesn’t make it into a rules reprint, should make it to Board Game Geek fan variants and I believe really spices up the game to next level and stays truer to the original arcade game.

In this variant the four ghosts are placed in the middle of the board trapped inside the walls, for the first couple of moves the ghosts can move the walls to release themselves. Just like in the original arcade game Pac-Man and the ghosts can wrap around the board in an attempt to sneak up on a character or evade capture. Both

Pac-Man and the ghosts are given walls which can be placed at any time during their turn and whilst the ghosts are given fewer walls it does allow more strategy in trying to guide Pac-Man into being cornered by the ghosts or block him from reaching his power-pellet easier. See set up below.

This additional variant removes a lot of the repetitiveness of the same set up and also adds further nostalgia for Pac-Man fans by giving it more of a feel of the original arcade game. One thing you could do, which didn’t quite match the arcade version was save your power-pellet to play whenever you wanted giving you that boost in movement. The ghosts also get a boost in movement when Pac-Man is closer to winning that last power-pellet to attempt to even out the gameplay. And since it’s an additional variant why not consider house ruling it to be even closer to the arcade game. Did you know that apparently in an effort to prevent Pac-Man becoming too difficult or boring the ghosts were programmed with their own distinct traits so you could even try making the ghosts move in similar ways to the arcade with the red ghost chasing Pac, the pink and blue ghosts trying to get ahead of him and the orange just randomly moving anywhere… perhaps roll a 4 sided die to determine movement?

Final Thoughts

The joy of Quoridor is how simple it is to learn and how much fun it is to play. Whilst you can develop a clever strategy for winning this game quite quickly it still has tons of replayable value. I’m not sure how much replayability there is with the Pac-Man variant as described in the rule book. Although I was very excited to play the variant that took me back to my childhood playing Pac-Man at the arcades and I see me playing that version of the game multiple times.

But… To be perfectly honest you don’t need two copies of this game. The Pac-Man element is gimmicky and really targets that market of people who want to own it because they love Pac-Man and they want to own a Pac-Man ‘thing’. If you already own Quoridor and you’re not looking specifically for Pac-Man you do not need to buy this game. However, if you do not already own Quoridor then I insist you MUST buy this version of the game!

Quoridor is a cool game in it’s own right so you’ll have loads of fun playing the classic rules but with this version you also get the added bonus of ghosts, I mean the variant, no I don’t, I do mean ghosts! They are quite simply the coolest, cutest, Pac-Man tormenting characters! The components in this game alone make it worth the purchase for any fan of the Pac-Man franchise, they are such high quality and beautifully coloured that they make it a pure pleasure to play with or a fantastic item to display with pride.