Gobble Guy

Clear the maze. Four ghosts have four different plans.

ArcadeCategory

MediumDifficulty

FreePrice

NoneInstall

Gobble Guy is a maze chase, and the ghosts are the game. There is no pathfinding in it at all: at every tile a ghost looks at the ways it can go, throws out the way it came, and takes whichever one is closest in a straight line to its own target tile. What makes each of them feel like a character is that the target is different. The red one aims at the tile you are standing on and never stops. The pink one aims four tiles ahead of the way you are facing, so running down a long straight is how you run into her. The cyan one takes the line from the red ghost to two tiles ahead of you and doubles it, which makes him harmless when the red ghost is far away and vicious when it is close. The orange one chases while he is far off and bolts for his corner as soon as you are within eight tiles, which is why one ghost always seems to lose its nerve. They also swap between hunting you and retreating to their corners on a timer, and every switch turns them around where they stand, which is what stops a ghost train following you round the same loop forever. The tunnel across the middle wraps, and ghosts crawl through it. Twice a level a quarter drops into the corridor below the ghost house and sits for nine seconds. It is worth more than the pellets you could eat in the time it takes to reach it, and it lands in the most exposed corridor on the board with the house at your back, so taking it is a decision rather than a pickup.

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Controls

Keyboard
`Arrows or WASD`	Move
`Enter`	Start
`P or Esc`	Pause
`R`	Restart

Touch: Swipe anywhere on the maze to turn. A short flick is enough, and the longer axis of the swipe wins.

Tips

Turns are buffered. Press the direction before you reach the corner and it will be taken the moment it becomes legal, which is how you take a corner cleanly at full speed.
Do not run in long straight lines. The pink ghost aims four tiles ahead of where you are facing, so a straight corridor is the one place she can be certain where you will be.
Watch the red ghost to read the cyan one. The cyan ghost takes his bearing from the red ghost's position, so he is only dangerous when the two of them are near each other.
Save a power pellet rather than eating it on sight. Eaten in a chain the four ghosts are worth 200, 400, 800 and 1600, and the chain resets on every pellet, so one good pellet is worth more than three panicked ones.
The tunnel is your escape. Ghosts move at little more than half speed through it, so a chase you cannot win in the open is often winnable by heading for the middle row.
The quarter is worth taking early and worth ignoring late. It appears below the ghost house after 70 and after 170 pellets, and it pays more every level, but the corridor it sits in has the house at your back and nowhere to run if two ghosts arrive together.