Prime Video is bringing another banger from Netflix’s Love, Death, & Robots team, who are asking: What would it really be like to be stuck in a world of Pac-Man? Secret Level, the upcoming animated anthology series made up of 15 short stories based on several video games and franchises, including fan favorites like Mega Man, Warhammer, Armored Core, Dungeons & Dragons, and much more, is bringing the pain to Pac-Man. After making it their bloodiest episode, Dave Wilson, Tim Miller, and JT Petty of Love, Death, & Robots told Entertainment Weekly about how their Pac-Man episode would, in Pac-Man owner Bandai Namco’s words, leave audiences asking, “What the f— did they do to Pac-Man?”
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Inspired by the endlessly brutal repetition of Pac-Man, the episode follows a lone swordsman as they make their journey across an apocalyptic wasteland with a big, yellow, floating orb voiced by The Mandalorian’s Emily Swallow guiding them, according to EW. At Namco’s request to subvert audiences’ expectations, the team gives audiences a look into the dark underbelly of the brightly-colored arcade game world. The orb, called Puck after the yellow creature’s original name, Puck-Man, instructs the “chosen one” to hack and slash through the wasteland, with a cut-throat mantra of “Eat, or be eaten.”
After many ideas were thrown at the wall, Petty created one that shined above the rest of the retro-focused ones for its interpretation of the overall feeling of the repetitive and enduring arcade game that fit the series’ focus on reimagining worlds from fan-favorite video games.
“We spent a long time trying to respect the entire 50-year history with
Pac-Man
and did a lot of retro-style, cute cartoon
Pac-Man
s—. Eventually, me and Dave were like, we just gotta do the John Melius version of this. What is
Blood Meridian Pac-Man
?” – JT Petty via EW
According to EW, Conan the Barbarian, one of Melius’ famous screenplays, Black Mirror, and Mandy were all named as inspirations for the 10-minute Pac-Man episode, directed by Victor Maldonado and Aldredo Torres.
“Honestly, it was acknowledging that
Pac-Man
is the
Beowulf
of narrative gaming. It’s the
Er
text at the center of characters being in video games and trying to take that seriously. If this is a world entirely driven by hideous appetite, how does that work?” – JT Petty via EW
‘Secret Level’ Represents the Player in a Darkly True Way
The animated anthology series, featuring voice performances from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, Keanu Reeves, Temuera Morrison, and many more, represents the player in a dark, yet extremely true, sense in the bloody Pac-Man episode. As Petty told EW, the swordsman is like a newborn baby in an adult’s body, dropped into the nightmare world to kill mutant monsters that replace the classic ghosts of the game for the spherical entity that seems to be using him for its own dark motives.
The swordsman’s voice actor, Aleks Le, told EW about the unique process of building the player’s stand-in character.
“As an actor and storyteller, I am captivated by the underbelly of the stories we tell because they give us a way to explore the very present shadow of ourselves as individuals and our culture without being called out in a way that might make us defensive. Because of this, the things that become such cultural phenomena are of even more interest to me — what
is
the underbelly of something as pastel pretty as
Pac-Man
?” – Aleks Le via EW
The Pac-Man episode seems to play on the dark reality of the human emotions behind these beloved games and players’ experiences with them, and we’re here for it.
Secret Level
will premiere on Prime on December 10.
