Pac-Man Must Die! is a collaborative game for two or more players.

In a “reversal” of the classic Pac-Man, each player controls a ghost and must collect “dots”, while at the same time avoiding being captured by Pac-Man monsters. To win, you must collect all the dots matching the color of your own ghost.

But, some of the dots are located on the displays of other players’ devices. You can enter another person’s handheld display by using “doors” at the edges of the map. Once there, you must look at the other user’s display to control her/his ghost. The game is entirely peer-to-peer, so players can join and leave the game session at any time.

An example of novel interaction triggered by shared display games: one player is running away with a display on which another user’s game character resides.

Pac-Man Must Die! is part of the Future Application Lab (Viktoria Institute, Sweden) Collaborative Games research at The project aims at creating games that require players to share their displays with each other to advance in the game.