Chomper

Overview

Chomper is a fast-paced maze game where you race against the clock, munching pills while avoiding skeletons. It’s inspired by Pac-Man, but I wanted to add my own twist.

There are power-ups that let you eat the skeletons instead of running from them. There are doors and switches that can block enemies or open up new routes. Time is also part of the challenge: eating dots or defeating enemies adds seconds, but if you lose all your health you turn into a skeleton yourself.

Development Story

I wanted to make a maze game that felt familiar but had a few new tricks. Pac-Man is great, but I liked the idea of adding a bit more strategy and puzzle-solving.

The first thing I coded was the player movement and collision. Once that felt smooth, I built out the rest: enemies, timers, power-ups, and extra maze mechanics.

The hardest bit was the enemy AI. Random movement wasn’t interesting enough, so I tried out A* pathfinding. That made the skeletons much smarter without feeling unfair, and it made the whole game more tense and exciting.

Technical Notes

Chomper uses a bunch of BeepMini features:

• Animated actors for the player and enemies.
• Automated wall tiles using bitmasks, so I didn’t have to draw every wall by hand.
• Generated music and sound effects to keep the retro feel.

Collision checks are simple tile lookups, nothing fancy. Enemy AI runs on A*, which was new to me at the time. Levels build up in complexity, but the system is flexible enough that I can keep adding more.

Reflection

Chomper was my first time using A* pathfinding, and it worked out better than I expected. I’ll definitely use it again, and I might even bake it straight into BeepMini for other games.

If I come back to Chomper, I’d love to add teleporting portals to shake up the maze layouts even more. That feels like the next logical step.