baten kaitos origins also gives us the concept of the pac-man child enclosure so that he can't eat your whole inventory. this is a story i can make as long as i want it to be.

the shortest version is that there is a sidequest where a guy foists pac-man himself into your inventory. pac man will move around and eat adjacent items, but cannot eat or pass through certain unique quest-related items. so you can corner him with those and prevent him from snacking, and place only specific items you wish to feed him into this enclosure with him.

sidenote; his quest involves feeding him one of every non-unique inventory item in the game, at which point literally every attack you do becomes a crit. you deserve it, for doing all that.

anyways because of this sidequest every single inventory item from origins on the wiki has a field of whether or not they block pac-man keep him contained at all costs.

I finally finished my first run of Fire Woman Matoigumi, which will probably end up being the last "new" game I beat in 2022. Considering I started this year by doing my first legitimate Shiori run in the Saturn version of Tokimemo, it feels like a pretty fitting note to end on as a dating sim-adjacent game that's plenty inventive in its own right. (And if you're understandably just joining me and have no idea what the hell I'm going on about this time, you can find a basic breakdown here.)

While I overall wouldn't quite call it absolutely essential to play for non-genre fans, my previous impressions still absolutely stand. It's an immaculately drawn and animated game with a lot of heart and surprisingly charming character writing despite how brief and to-the-point your exchanges with the cast members always are. What initially started as a curious Google search after having its box art catch my eye during a routine search for games to buy on Surugaya has now become one of my personal favorite games of its kind in quite some time.