Tuesday Tips: Life-Sized Pac-Man

Sam Jones is the Youth Services Librarian at the Beaver Dam Public Library. She shares tips to make your job easier in her Tuesday posts.

When planning summer programs, I felt like I saw life-sized games everywhere in library Facebook groups. I knew I wanted to do one this summer, so after some thinking, I decided on life-sized Pac-Man.

The setup was relatively easy. I put painter's tape on the carpet to make the maze, scattered felt circles as the snack pellets, and used giant craft pom-poms for the power pellets. To play the game, I picked one person to be Pac-Man and four to five people to be ghosts. People volunteered for the part they wanted and did not complain about sitting out some rounds.

For the people playing as Pac-Man, I gave them three lives. For the people playing as ghosts, I emphasized that they need to act like the ghosts in the game by walking and staying within the lines of the maze. When Pac-Man grabbed the power pellets, they then had 5 seconds where they could "eat" the ghosts. If I were to do it again, I would get some sort of electronic counter. I counted the five seconds out loud, so my voice got pretty sore during the program.

I marketed it to all ages, but most participants were elementary-aged children. I did, however, get two moms to play a few rounds. The program was a drop-in event from 2-4 p.m., and many participants stayed the whole time. Everyone seemed to have a ton of fun, even though they didn't play every round. This was a great introduction to life-sized games, and I look forward to doing more in the future!