Pac-Man: Puzzle Tour is another Candy Crush clone

Pac-Man is one of the first gaming franchises that fans turned into a phenomenon. But these days, the yellow pizza-shaped hero is spending more time chasing other hit games than his own power pellets.

Bandai Namco released Pac-Man: Puzzle Tour for iOS and Android today. It is the publisher’s spin on the megapopular Candy Crush Saga games. Pac-Man must match together three of the same kinds of fruit instead of chasing ghosts through mazes. This is Bandai Namco’s latest crack at the $30 billion mobile market, and the company has once again tried to jump on a trend by leveraging one of its existing properties. Of course, Bandai Namco tried to do something new with Pac-Man last year with the well-received Pac-Man 256 from the studio that created the beloved mobile action hit Crossy Road. But that was an exception to the company’s general strategy that came from its efforts to revive its retro brands from the 1980s by working with indie developers. Puzzle Tour is not the result of that initiative.