👻 GHOST DINER

Looks like a ghost — run away. Looks like food — go and eat it. That is the whole game, and you never have to remember anything else.

Eat every pellet in the maze and you get a new one. Each pellet is 10 points, and the four big glowing ones are power pills.

Swipe the maze to steer, or push the joystick underneath. On a computer it is the arrow keys or W A S D. You can't turn half way along a corridor — but press the direction just before the turning and the game takes it for you the moment it can.

Bite a power pill and all four of them turn into dinner — CHASER becomes a 🍔, AMBUSHER a 🍕, SANDWICH a 🍩 and SHY a 🍟. While they look like food they are running away from you and you can eat them: 200 points for the first one, then 400, 800 and 1600. Eat all four on one pill and that pill was worth 3,000 points — which is where a really big score comes from.

A white plate flashes behind the food when it is nearly out of time. The moment they look like ghosts again they can eat you, so get out of there. The DINNER light at the top counts down the seconds you have left.

⚠️ The pill gets a second shorter on every maze, and by maze nine it doesn't scare them at all any more. It still makes all four of them turn round on the spot, which is worth having.

The four of them

All four are dangerous until you bite a power pill. They all get about the same way: at every junction each one takes whichever turning gets it closest to the square it is aiming at. It can't see the walls in between — it just heads that way and hopes. What makes them different is what each one aims at, and the food in brackets is what it turns into when it's scared.

• CHASER (🍔) — aims at the square you are standing on. Straight at you, no tricks. When the maze is nearly empty he loses his temper, speeds up and grows eyebrows.
• AMBUSHER (🍕) — aims four squares in front of you. Running away from him in a straight line runs you into him. Turn instead.
• SANDWICH (🍩) — looks at where CHASER is, and aims for the square exactly as far past you as CHASER is behind you. The two of them squeeze in from both sides and you are the filling. Watch CHASER and you know where this one is going.
• SHY (🍟) — chases you exactly like CHASER until he gets within eight squares, then loses his nerve and bolts for his corner. The least dangerous and the most annoying.

Two things that are on your side

They give up every so often. All four stop chasing at once, turn round on the spot and head for their own corners for a few seconds. The SCATTER light at the top comes on when it happens. That is the moment to go and get the awkward pellets. ⚠️ It stops happening after a while and then they chase you and never stop, so a maze you take too long over gets nasty.

The tunnel. Ghosts crawl through it at half speed, so going out one side and in the other is how you lose one that is right behind you.

Three lives, and one more at 10,000 points — once, and only once. A snack turns up under the ghost house twice a maze and doesn't wait around.