The trouble with games that are like Pac-Man is that they all try to look and play as close to the venerable arcade game as they can without getting sued. In trying to capture the magic, they just come off as cheap, unimaginative imitations. Not so with today’s featured game.

Tornado Games brings us King Jester. As you might guess from the title, the game has a medieval theme where you are the jester king on a quest to become the king of the realm. You do this by completing 15 levels of ever more difficult mazes. But what has this to do with Pac-Man, you ask?

If you look closely at the game, the similarities become apparent. In some ways, this game is more imaginative than Pac-Man. You play by guiding your character around the maze and changing the maze color as you go - but wait, there are evil brown knights that can slay you and are doing their best to undo your work. On each level there are magic crowns that turn them into harmless and killable ghost knights. You get through each level by changing the color of a certain percentage of the maze, and getting through 15 levels in this game is going to require wizard-like skill.

We like this game because, like Pac-Man, it keeps you on your toes as you try to stay alive through the various levels and it keeps you coming back to play again in order to test out your latest theory on how to win. It also has a high scoreboard to judge yourself against. Hopefully not too harshly, because after all, you are the Jester King.

GameSpotter is a site that specializes in finding the best Web-based games. Each day we feature a new game on our front page. Each month we add dozens of new games to our hand-edited directory.

[tags]gamespotter,pac-man,king jester,tornado games,brown knight,15 levels[/tags]