Well, there is some real graphics, sound, and programming talent on display over there. If that team comes over here next then good things will happen.
Now that is a brilliant idea
I was thinking the same thing while witnessing the work and community effort shown in the Fix-it dropbox.
A while a go I started on my own Pacman Battle Royale clone. The project is currently on hold (started work on my coffeetable project), so I might as well post the stuff I've written in my notebook about what I had in mind.
First, the gameplay is exactly as the Pacman B.R. so keep that in mind.
So:
The theme is halloween (my prototype C# project was named 'Candy Nightmare').
Replace the pacmen with human characters. Replace the pellets with candy (sugarcanes, chocolates) the powerpills are replaced by bigger candy (lollypops) .
Now here is the biggest change: when a player eats a powerpill they turn into a big monster (vampire, mummy, werewolf, frankenstein). So the large pacmen are actually unique monsters. The bumping and eating mechanism will still be in tact.
The ghosts are ghosts in the same graphic style as the rest of the game. I used the same maze layout but with graphics like a park or a graveyard (tried to get a style similar to ghouls'n ghosts).
Other notes I made was to have a character select screen, and instant join mini selection (much like in the game Rampage). The player can pick the monster they want to be (unless allready taken by another player). The characters would be linked to their monster (for example the female human will turn into a vampire, the blackhaired guy named Victor turns into frankenstein).
I did some tests for special effects, such as a comicbook lightning crash when a player eats a powerpill and an animation for the transition between human and monster while keeping control over the character as not to interrupt the gameplay.
Another thing I hoped to incorporate was configurable player (score) positions, as not everyone will have a 4 player cocktail table such as the origional. Ofcourse it has to act like a real arcade game ("insert coin to join in" and Cab friendly controls).
I have made more notes and did some experimental code but this is the basic outline.
If Sjaak wants to join in, the biggest portion of the game is there- with a community effort we could have our own PacMan Battle Royale version!