Pac-Man Geo is an AR Game That Turns Real Maps into Pac-Man Stages

Namco Bandai has just announced Pac-Man Geo, an augmented reality mobile game based on the venerable Pac-Man franchise.

You’d be forgiven for assuming that Pac-Man Geo, like the forthcoming The Witcher: Monster Slayer, is a Pokemon Go clone – but you’d be wrong. In fact, it lets you convert real world street maps into Pac-Man maps.

Pac-Man Geo is being pitched a deeper take on the Pac-Man formula, with exploration baked in. You’ll be able to take road layout data from Google Maps and create your own levels, complete with power pellets, ghosts, and power-ups. Then, while you’re playing you’ll get local information on the stages you’ve created.

Geo Whizz

We think it’s a swell idea with lots of promise, though these things tend to fall down in practice. What real world location could ever work as well as a map painstakingly put together by game designers?

We’ll be able to see for ourselves later this month, as Pac-Man Geo is due to launch in September. You can pre-register for it right now.