Secret Level creators explain its horrifying Pac-Man episode

digitaltrends.com:

Spoilers for Secret Level‘s Pac-Man episode follow.

Pac-Man: Circle is the one episode of Secret Level that’s truly unforgettable.

While most of Amazon’s new gaming anthology TV series plays it very safe, Pac-Man: Circle takes a radical new direction. The episode sees an alien-looking man called the Swordsman freed by an ominous spherical orb called Puck. While Puck is obviously supposed to be Pac-Man, Emily Swallow’s excellent portrayal of this character sounds more like Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey than any voiced version of the character we’ve seen before. Puck constantly reminds the Swordsman that they’re trapped in a maze they need to break free of and that it’s eat or be eaten if you want to survive.

Pac-Man: Circle is a bloody, violent, and subversive interpretation of a game typically touted for its universal appeal. As I watched it, it was hard to believe Bandai Namco would encourage such an episode to be associated with Pac-Man, but executive producer Dave Wilson tells Digital Trends that Bandai Namco Entertainment outright encouraged it.

• Pac-Man turns 40 today. Here are 7 secrets you didn’t know about it

“They really just threw down the gauntlet,” Wilson says. “Through the translator, the mission statement from Bandai was: We would like audiences to wonder what the f**k they did with Pac-Man.”

How Pac-Man: Circle was made

According to Wilson, Secret Level’s writers’ room distilled the elements of Pac-Man down to single lines that appear in the episode, such as “eat or be eaten” and “you can eat them, but never their eyes.” Those serve as the basis for the tragic, mature story this episode of Secret Level tells through the basic framework of Pac-Man. On the visual front, the episode’s look was inspired by artists like Moebius and Pascal Blanchet, leaning into vivid colors while not being afraid to have some grit.

Wilson and executive producer Tim