Pacman Game: Play Maze Muncher Free Online

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In this guide

• How to play
• How Maze Muncher works
• Meet the four ghosts
• Scoring and levels
• Controls
• The Daily Maze
• 7 tips for high scores
• Maze Muncher FAQ
• Final verdict

How to play Maze Muncher

The goal never changes: empty the maze before the ghosts empty your lives. Everything else is nerve, timing, and knowing which ghost is which.

1. Press Play. Your muncher starts under the ghost house, facing left, with three lives in hand. The ghosts leave their house one by one: Blaze is already out, Vex follows at once, Hex at 5 seconds, and Wisp at 12 seconds.
2. Eat pellets. Every small dot is worth 10 points. Clear all 169 pellets and all 4 power orbs to finish the level and climb to the next, faster one.
3. Respect the ghosts. One touch from a hunting ghost costs a life. The four ghosts take turns between patrolling their home corners and hunting you, switching on a timer, so a quiet corridor can turn hostile fast.
4. Grab a power orb to flip the hunt. The big glowing orbs in the corners turn every ghost blue and slow for a few seconds. Now you are the hunter: munched ghosts pay 200, 400, 800, then 1,600 points in a chain, and their eyes scurry home before they rejoin the chase.
5. Watch for the bonus fruit. After you eat 60 pellets, and again at 120, a fruit appears in the middle of the maze for a few seconds. Grab it for bonus points that grow with your level.
6. Chase 10,000. The moment your score passes 10,000 points you earn one extra life, once per run. Lose all your lives and the run ends, but your best score and career stats are saved in your browser.

How Maze Muncher works

If you learned the ropes on any classic pacman game, the rhythm is already in your fingers: clear the maze, respect the ghosts, and strike the moment an orb turns them blue. Maze Muncher keeps that rhythm and gives the ghosts modern brains. Each ghost picks its next turn at every junction by aiming at a target tile, and the target is what makes them feel so different. One aims at you. One aims ahead of you. One aims using its partner. One aims at you only while it is far away.

The hunt runs on a clock. The ghosts alternate between Scatter, where each one drifts back to its own home corner, and Chase, where all four hunt with their real targeting. Early on you get 7 seconds of Scatter between 20-second hunts. As levels rise the Scatter breaks shrink, the ghosts get quicker, and the power orbs protect you for less time, down to a single heartbeat of a second at the top levels. When the mode flips, every hunting ghost instantly reverses direction, so a ghost on your tail can suddenly be running away, and a ghost ahead of you can turn straight into your path.

The ghost house in the middle plays by strict rules. You can never enter it, and the ghosts only leave through the little pink door at the top, one at a time on their timers. A munched ghost turns into a pair of eyes that races home at double speed, slips back inside, and comes straight back out at full strength. There is no hiding from them forever: the side tunnel halfway down the maze wraps from one edge of the board to the other, for you and for the ghosts alike, so use it to shake a tail, or to cut across the map when a fruit appears.

Meet the four ghosts

All four ghosts are original GameOLL characters, drawn and coded for this game. Learn their colours and their habits, because the right escape depends entirely on which ghost is coming for you.

Ghost	Look	How it hunts	How to beat it
Blaze	Red, with a flame tuft	The chaser. Aims straight at the tile you are standing on, every single turn.	Never run in a straight line for long. Turn often and use the tunnel; Blaze follows your past, not your future.
Vex	Violet, with two horns	The ambusher. Aims four tiles ahead of the direction you are facing, cutting off your route.	Fight your instincts: when Vex closes in, turn toward it and slip behind it. It has already committed to where you were going.
Hex	Teal, with an antenna	The trickster. Picks a point two tiles ahead of you, then doubles the distance from Blaze to that point. It herds you toward its partner.	Watch Blaze, not Hex. When Blaze is far away, Hex wanders off-line; when Blaze is close, break sideways early.
Wisp	Lime, with a scalloped top	The shy one. Hunts you while it is more than eight tiles away, then loses its nerve and drifts back to its corner.	Wisp guards the bottom-left. Clear that corner early, while Wisp is still chasing you somewhere else.

Scoring and levels

Scoring is old-school and exact. Pellets feed your score steadily, but the real points live in the orb chains and the fruit. A perfect single-orb chain, all four ghosts before the fright runs out, pays 3,000 points on its own.

Action	Points
Eat a pellet	10
Eat a power orb	50
Munch a blue ghost, 1st in the chain	200
Munch a blue ghost, 2nd in the chain	400
Munch a blue ghost, 3rd in the chain	800
Munch a blue ghost, 4th in the chain	1,600
Bonus fruit	100 to 1,000 by level (see below)
Pass 10,000 points	One extra life, once per run

Level	Ghost speed	Orb fright time	Bonus fruit points
1	7.0 tiles per second	6 seconds	100
2	7.3 tiles per second	5 seconds	300
3	7.6 tiles per second	4 seconds	500
4	7.9 tiles per second	3 seconds	700
5	8.2 tiles per second	2 seconds	1,000
6 and up	8.5 tiles per second	1 second	1,000

Your muncher also speeds up a touch each level, from 7.5 tiles per second toward a cap of 8.4, so a skilled player is never simply out-run. Blue ghosts slow to 4.5 tiles per second while frightened, and a pair of returning eyes races home at 14 tiles per second, far too fast to chase, so do not bother.

Controls for phone and PC

Action	Phone / tablet	PC / laptop
Steer	Swipe on the board, or tap the direction pad	Arrow keys or WASD
Start or play again	Tap Play	Click Play, or press Space or Enter
Pause	Tap Pause	Click Pause, or press P
Sound on or off	Tap the speaker button	Click the speaker button
Start the Daily Maze	Tap Daily Maze on the start screen	Click Daily Maze on the start screen

One steering trick matters at this speed: you can queue a turn early. Tap or press the new direction before you reach the junction and the muncher turns the instant the opening appears. You can also reverse instantly at any time, mid-corridor, which is your emergency brake when a ghost pops out of the tunnel ahead of you.

The Daily Maze

Every day, the start screen offers a Daily Maze: the same maze and the same level 1 rules, but with a par score set by the date. Par lands anywhere from 2,200 to 3,000 points, and it is the same for everyone on that day. Clear the maze or beat the score chase before your lives run out, and the run counts. Your first Daily run of a new day extends your streak if you played yesterday too, and your best Daily score is always saved, even on a replay. The Daily is a single-level challenge: one maze, three lives, one target. Tomorrow the par changes and the streak is on the line again.

7 tips for high scores

1. Clear the edges first. The outer corridors and the four orb pockets are the most dangerous ground late in a level, when ghosts are fast and you have nowhere left to run. Bank them early while Scatter breaks are long.
2. Save orbs for a crowd. An orb eaten with one ghost nearby pays 200. The same orb with three ghosts in reach can pay 1,400 or more. Linger near an orb, let the hunt come to you, then flip it.
3. Finish your chain math. The chain resets the moment the fright ends, and blue ghosts flash white when about a second is left. If the fourth ghost is not right there, take the points you have and run.
4. Use the tunnel like a trapdoor. The side tunnel wraps you from one edge to the other instantly. Dive in with a ghost on your tail and you come out half a map away. Just check the far side first: Hex loves to wait there.
5. Read the mode flips. When Scatter turns to Chase, every hunting ghost reverses on the spot. A ghost that was fleeing up a corridor is suddenly charging down it. Give junctions a wide berth at the flip moments, roughly every 20 seconds of hunting.
6. Do not chase the eyes. A munched ghost is back out of the house in seconds, angry and full speed. Spend those seconds eating pellets on the far side of the maze, not hovering near the pink door.
7. Play the Daily like a score attack. Par is beatable with pellets, one good orb chain and the fruit, and you do not need to clear the maze to beat it. Take the fruit at 60 pellets, chain hard at the second orb, and let the streak take care of itself.

Is Maze Muncher safe and free?

Yes. Maze Muncher is free to play on this page. There is nothing to download and no account to make. The game makes no external requests and collects no data: your best score, your career pellets and ghosts, your Daily streak and your sound setting are stored only in your own browser, on your own device.

Maze Muncher is an original game made by GameOLL. The muncher, the four ghosts, the maze layout and the artwork are all its own, drawn and coded from scratch for this page. It is a loving tribute to the maze-chase classics of the arcade era, and it is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the makers of any arcade original.

More games and guides on GameOLL

• Want every game in one place? Visit our Play Games page.
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• Love claiming ground instead of pellets? Play Paper Territory, our paper io game.
• Want one-button flying? Play Copter Rescue, our helicopter game.

Maze Muncher FAQ

Is Maze Muncher free to play?

Yes. Maze Muncher is 100% free. You play it right on this page, with no download, no sign-up and no payment.

How do the four ghosts hunt you?

Each ghost aims at a different target tile. Blaze aims straight at you. Vex aims four tiles ahead of the way you are facing. Hex doubles the distance from Blaze to a point just ahead of you. Wisp hunts you from far away but retreats to its corner when it gets within eight tiles. All four alternate between hunting and patrolling their corners on a timer.

What does a power orb do?

Eating one of the four big glowing orbs turns every ghost blue and slow for a few seconds: 6 seconds on level 1, less on later levels. While they are blue you can munch them for 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 points in a chain. A munched ghost turns into eyes, races home, and comes back out at full strength.

How does the Daily Maze work?

The Daily Maze is a one-level challenge on the same maze, with a par score set by the date, between 2,200 and 3,000 points. Beat the par or clear the maze before your lives run out and the day counts toward your streak. Your first Daily run of a new day builds the streak, and your best Daily score is saved.

Can I play Maze Muncher on my phone?

Yes. The game is built for touch. Swipe on the board or tap the direction pad to steer. It also works with a mouse and the arrow keys or WASD on laptops and desktop PCs.

Is Maze Muncher the arcade original?

No. Maze Muncher is an original game made by GameOLL, inspired by the classic maze-chase games of the arcade era. Its characters, maze, art and code were created for this site, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the makers of any arcade game.

Last updated: November 5, 2026. Maze Muncher v1.0 — the first release of our original maze-chase game, with 169 pellets, four ghosts with distinct targeting brains, scatter and chase waves, orb chains up to 1,600 points, a bonus fruit, an extra life at 10,000, and a Daily Maze with a date-set par. An original GameOLL browser game. Found a bug? Tell us in the comments and we will fix it in the next version.