Pacman

• To break the ice by encouraging interaction between all the participants
• To get energized : waking up the body and the mind
• To explore different ways of working together and understand their effects : cooperation (horizontal), autocratic (vertical)
• To create group cohesion

In a big room place as many chairs as there are players leaving enough space between them so people can easily circulate. Ask all the players to sit on a chair except one who will stand in a corner of the room and will play the pacman. He/she will start to walk, and try to reach an empty chair to sit on. The goal of the other players is to prevent him/her from achieving the objective for as long as possible. To do so, the players have to change chairs without leaving an empty one close to the player walking.

Depending on the objectives you want to reach and regarding the topic of your training course you can add rules to the game in order for it to help you address a specific issue. Here are some examples of additional rules you can add :

• When a player has risen from his chair, he may not sit back in the same chair.
• Only one person is allowed to speak and he/she will tell the other players what to do. The game can be a pretext to explore our ways of organizing ourselves : with a leader or with an horizontal model. Make a debrief with the participants to analyze how the two situations unfolded.
• Only one player at a time can stand up.

• As many chairs as there are participants
• A large space