Spoilers for Secret Level‘s Pac-Man episode follow.
Pac-Man: Circle is the one episode of Secret Level that’s truly unforgettable.
While most of Amazon’s new gaming anthology TV series plays it very safe, Pac-Man: Circle takes a radical new direction. The episode sees an alien-looking man called the Swordsman freed by an ominous spherical orb called Puck. While Puck is obviously supposed to be Pac-Man, Emily Swallow’s excellent portrayal of this character sounds more like Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey than any voiced version of the character we’ve seen before. Puck constantly reminds the Swordsman that they’re trapped in a maze they need to break free of and that it’s eat or be eaten if you want to survive.
Pac-Man: Circle is a bloody, violent, and subversive interpretation of a game typically touted for its universal appeal. As I watched it, it was hard to believe Bandai Namco would encourage such an episode to be associated with Pac-Man, but executive producer Dave Wilson tells Digital Trends that Bandai Namco Entertainment outright encouraged it.
“They really just threw down the gauntlet,” Wilson says. “Through the translator, the mission statement from Bandai was: We would like audiences to wonder what the f**k they did with Pac-Man.”
How Pac-Man: Circle was made
According to Wilson, Secret Level’s writers’ room distilled the elements of Pac-Man down to single lines that appear in the episode, such as “eat or be eaten” and “you can eat them, but never their eyes.” Those serve as the basis for the tragic, mature story this episode of Secret Level tells through the basic framework of Pac-Man. On the visual front, the episode’s look was inspired by artists like Moebius and Pascal Blanchet, leaning into vivid colors while not being afraid to have some grit.
Wilson and executive producer Tim Miller admitted to Digital Trends that many other elements of Pac-Man: Circle were established early on and stayed relatively similar throughout development. Swallow, whose voice you may recognize as The Armorer from The Mandalorian, and Aleks Le, who portrayed Luke in Street Fighter 6, came in as the voices of Puck and the Swordsman early on in the story reel process and weren’t ever replaced by other actors. Wilson said he’d love to release the story reel at some point so people can see how close it is.
Pac-Man: Circle is much longer than other episodes of its ilk in Secret Level because the developers stuck so closely to the original vision. Wilson explained that the episode was originally supposed to only be 5 minutes long, but Illusorium Studios’ story reel for the episode came in at 9 minutes. Wilson and Miller thought it would be “sacrilege to cut it half,” so they gave Illusorium a choice of whether to keep it at the longer length or cut it in half. Illusorium chose to put in the extra work to realize the full vision for Pac-Man: Circle.
In its boldness, Pac-Man: Circle is Secret Level at its best. The series’ low points are the slower, more dialogue-filled episodes that can feel like a marketing ploy for games like New World: Aeternum or PlayStation as a brand. Episodes that lean into action (like the Gladiator-riffing Unreal Tournament episode) or take large creative risks like Pac-Man: Circle are the most enjoyable to watch.
If I only get one shot, I want to be able to do whatever the f**k I want.
This anthology’s oddball collection of adaptations has an eclectic feeling, but to its creators, that variety is part of Secret Level’s beauty. Miller is appreciative that so many companies, from Bandai Namco to the console publishers, were willing to work together and be included alongside each other in Secret Level.
“You could think that they might want to go off into their separate marketing corner and jealously guard their IP, but they don’t,” Miller tells Digital Trends. “They all came together in a really joyous, eager way. I think they like the fact that it’s this sort of jam session between the whole game industry, from indies to classics to games that haven’t come out yet to blockbuster AAA stuff that’s on the market now.”
It also may have helped that Miller didn’t have a preexisting notion of wanting to connect all of the episodes together narratively or thematically. “Especially with an anthology based on games, I didn’t want to limit it to just one genre or one type of game … If I only get one shot, I want to be able to do whatever the f**k I want or that I think might make a cool story.”
While that approach resulted in some duds, it also gave us a few unforgettable episodes like Pac-Man: Circle. Regardless of the uneven quality of the overall show, there’s solace to be taken from the fact that some episodes were able to take brave leaps of faith and reinterpret the classic franchises they were based on. This makes an episode like Pac-Man: Circle that does just that well worth watching.
Pac-Man: Circle and several other Secret Level episodes are now available on Prime Video. Another batch of Secret Level animated shorts will drop on December 17.