How to play Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) on Mac
Game summary
Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) is my game-essay entry for the Critical Distance pandemics and games essay jam which was held in early 2021.
This short Bitsy game shares the connections I felt between Pac-Man and that weird year that was 2020. And please don't come away from the game thinking that I hate Pac-Man; I still have a great fondness for the pucky little game.
As with my other Bitsy games, Pareidolia was another attempt to push the engine as far as I could. This time I delved into modifying the javascript engine code itself. Which is, I suppose, the Bitsy equivalent of wall-hacking but it proved to be a nice way to work.
First released: Feb 2021
Play Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.
Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.
Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).
Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) installation steps for Mac
Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Pareidolia (or, Why I Saw Pac-Man Everywhere In 2020) like you would on any PC.
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