About Dot Muncher
Dot Muncher is a maze chase. You steer a hungry yellow muncher around a maze, eating every dot while three ghosts hunt you down. Grab one of the four big power pellets and, for a few seconds, the ghosts turn scared and you can eat them instead.
How to play
- The maze holds 146 small dots worth 10 points each and 4 power pellets worth 50 points each. Eating them all takes you to the next level.
- Eating a power pellet makes the ghosts scared for 7 seconds. Scared ghosts mostly run away from you and move more slowly.
- Catching a scared ghost scores 200 points and sends it back to its starting pen.
- Being caught by a ghost that is not scared costs a life. You and the ghosts return to your starting positions, but the dots you have eaten stay eaten.
- You have 3 lives in total. Extra lives are never awarded.
- Your speed stays the same at every level, but the ghosts get a little faster each level. From level 5 onwards they are slightly faster than you.
- The row that runs through the ghost pen is a tunnel: leave by one side of the maze and you come out on the other.
Controls
- Keyboard: arrow keys or W, A, S, D. The first press starts the game.
- Touch: swipe in the direction you want to go.
- On-screen pad: the four arrow buttons below the maze.
- You can press a direction before you reach a junction. The muncher remembers it and turns as soon as that path opens up.
Tips and strategy
- Press turns early. Because the game remembers your chosen direction, you can corner smoothly at full speed instead of stopping at junctions.
- Ghosts mostly head towards you but sometimes wander at random, and they cannot turn back on themselves. Use loops in the maze to lead them around and get behind them.
- Save the power pellets for when ghosts are close. Eating one with no ghosts nearby wastes most of its 7 seconds.
- Each scared ghost is worth 200, the same as 20 dots, so chasing them is worthwhile, but keep an eye on the timer and back off before it runs out.
- Use the side tunnel to escape. Ghosts chase by distance, and the tunnel can throw them off.
- Clear dots in the long corridors first and leave isolated ones for when the ghosts are far away.
Background
The maze chase genre was defined by Namco's Pac-Man, designed by Toru Iwatani and released in 1980. Its focus on eating rather than shooting, and its colourful ghost characters, helped bring a much wider audience to arcades. The power pellet that briefly turns the hunted into the hunter has since become one of the best known mechanics in video games. This game uses its own simpler ghost behaviour, with every ghost mostly chasing and partly wandering.
Questions
- How long do power pellets last?
- Seven seconds. During that time the ghosts flee and move more slowly, and each one you catch is worth 200 points.
- Does it get harder?
- Yes. The ghosts move a little faster on each new level, while your speed stays the same.
- Where is my best score saved?
- In your browser's local storage on this device.