Simple Coding Tutorials on YouTube has been publishing a series of tutorials over the past few months all about re-creating the classic game Pacman in Phaser 3. In the first video they start by creating the game map, adding Pacman and the pellets. In part two, they cover smooth movement through the maze and the joyful task of pellet munching! Part three introduces the ghosts and uses an A* path finder to implement a scatter mode.
Part four emboldens the ghosts by adding in the ability to chase Pacman, giving each ghost its own type of chase behaviour. Part five expands on the scatter mode, making the ghost less predictable and also adding the 'blinking' phase, when the scatter mode starts to end. And in the recently released Part six, we add life counters, death animations and more.
Learning to make classics like this may seem "easy" on the surface, but as soon as you dig in, you start to peel back the layers and appreciate just how complex some of these early games really were.