ince its founding and its first creation unveiled in 2017, Krayon has explored a central idea: our intimate relationship with time – with the sun, with light, and with the natural cycles and their mechanical poetry.

With Everywhere, its first creation, Krayon transformed contemporary watchmaking by inventing the first mechanical movement capable of calculating sunrise and sunset times anywhere on Earth, according to date and geographical location.

With Anywhere, the complication became more intimate: the wearer can define a personally meaningful location, allowing the luminous cycle that shapes their life to be displayed directly on the dial.

With Anyday, Krayon reinvented the mechanical agenda, offering — at a single glance — a complete view of the month: days, dates and calendar structure presented with unprecedented clarity.

Faithful to this singular way of connecting time to lived experience, the Neuchâtel-based Maison now surprises with an unexpected creation — yet one entirely coherent with its DNA: an encounter between the finest contemporary mechanics and one of the universal symbols of childhood and 1980s culture.

PAC-MAN celebrates its 45th anniversary, and its joyful, simple, luminous universe provides a natural playground for expressing, in a new way, what Krayon does best: telling time as a story.

Born in China in 1986, Fei Hou marks a new chapter in her creative journey with this latest Métiers d’Art creation. Alongside Rémi Maillat – her partner in life and in leading Krayon – she belongs to the PAC-MAN generation, though each with a distinct story.

Rémi, born in Switzerland in 1984, discovered the game in arcades, surrounded by friends, in the electric atmosphere so characteristic of the 1980s. Fei, in Beijing – already in a world where computers entered homes early — played alone, in front of her first machine: a quieter, more analytical, almost meditative experience reflecting the mathematician and engineer she would later become, and her role as Krayon’s “second brain.”

Two childhoods, different contexts — yet the same emotion: the mounting excitement, the sense of escape, the hypnotic pull of a small yellow character racing through a maze at full speed.

Together, they form a creative duo, as intimate as it is complementary, where their perspectives, cultures, and approaches feed a singular intellectual synergy.

With this limited series of 15 unique platinum pieces, Krayon embraces a distinct artistic approach: childhood emotion rediscovered, a deliberate wink, an uninhibited gesture — and a demonstration of creative maturity.

Fei Hou comments: “With the PAC-MAN series, Krayon shows that it also knows how to smile.”

PAC-MAN is a cycle. An endless loop. A character tracing a path, eating up points, triggering modes, traversing scenarios. On Anywhere, a disc turns, a cycle advances, a sun rises and sets, initiating day and night.

The connection was immediate: “What if the small sun in Anywhere became PAC-MAN? And what if it ate up points, fruits…and the great twilight cookie?”

The PAC-MAN series builds on the same movement as the Anywhere collection, a mechanical masterpiece capable of indicating sunrise and sunset anywhere on Earth. Here, the calibre’s micro-mechanics becomes the perfect framework for rendering an iconic game.

The concept remains the same as Anywhere, reimagined in the PAC-MAN universe.

The yellow character becomes the day/night indicator, advancing around the dial like the sun in the original complication.

Dots, fruit and ghosts appear according to the sunrise and sunset times of the selected location, animated by a system of superimposed discs.

The “great cookie” symbolises sunset: when PAC-MAN reaches it, night mode begins.

At midnight, the ghost gang turns blue—as in the game, they become “edible” – before regaining their original colours at dawn: red for Blinky, pink for Pinky, orange for Clyde, and light blue for Inky. The direction of their eyes subtly indicates the sunrise position – a detail perfectly aligned with Krayon’s aesthetic logic.

On equinox days, the configuration becomes perfectly symmetrical: twelve hours of day, twelve hours of night.

For this series, Krayon chose to return to PAC-MAN’s very origin – the first version of the game, rendered in exact scale, with all the rigour and finesse this demands.

The iconic yellow character, the dots, the fruit and the ghosts retain their precise proportions, as if suspended in their 1980 state.

On a polished onyx dial – perfectly smooth, deep as night – the famous maze unfolds, delicately pad printed for a translucent effect. It becomes visible only when light strikes at a precise angle — a discreet nod, an almost conspiratorial gesture reserved for the wearer.

Along the outer circumference, the fruit and ghosts — all hand-painted — appear to float within this mineral universe. The inscriptions — Midday, Midnight, March, September — adopt the original pixelated typography, while the Krayon logo becomes a cartouche distilled into its essential pixels.

As in arcade halls where no game unfolds exactly like the previous one, each Krayon PAC-MAN watch tells its own story. The position of the ghosts, fruit and symbols varies from piece to piece; some ghosts advance on four legs, others on three; strawberries and cherries shift in shape and hue.

Each of the fifteen pieces is unique — an object suspended between horology and play, between precious craftsmanship and joyful insouciance.

For each watch two creative paths converged: chance—like a “blind box” approach to haute horlogerie; and bespoke artistry, and Fei then composed the discs according to her intuition.

Faithful to the Atelier’s tradition, the collection is crafted in platinum — the metal reserved for the most prestigious projects, Métiers d’Art creations, unique pieces, and special series.

The 39 mm PT950 platinum case frames the onyx dial and its superimposed hand-painted sapphire discs.

The level of finishing aligns with that of Krayon’s most sophisticated complications: uncompromising, sculpted by light, conceived to endure with the same elegance with which PAC-MAN has traversed generations.

A playful gesture, yet executed with absolute rigour. Behind the apparent lightness, everything is thoughtfully conceived, calibrated and mastered.

The PAC-MAN collection marks a new dynamic for Krayon: an artistic gesture, a breath of freedom, without ever renouncing the seriousness of mechanics and aesthetic perfection.

It says something essential: Krayon is confident, serene, mature — and free to explore, and to smile.

Fei Hou shares: “The first games I played were Pac-Man and Super Mario. What I remember most is how you would completely forget about time. You wouldn’t even notice how fast it was passing. It was such a simple, pure kind of happiness. Time felt like a journey, not just a number… From my first Métiers d’Art piece until today, it has been an odyssey of expression. And I still believe this Pac-Man watch is an artistic and innovative timepiece. Innovation is not only about movement functions — it is also about vision. Forty-five years ago, the creator of Pac-Man designed that game under extremely limited memory and resolution. Even in that context, it was already art — something creative and ahead of its time. And the charm of independent watchmaking is about people. One person makes the decisions.”

Rémi Maillat adds: “We are deeply committed to crafting watches designed to last and transcend fashions. These are exceptional objects, made to accompany a lifetime. A personal object, profoundly unique, connected to a place to which we feel a special connection — a geographical point on the globe, but above all the light, the sun, which shapes the rhythm of life and evokes intimate references and cherished memories.”

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Krayon PAC-MAN
• Limited series of 15 unique pieces

Movement:

• Caliber C030
• Diameter: 35.40 mm
• Thickness: 5.00 mm
• Patented functional architecture

Functions:

• Hours and minutes
• Sunrise and sunset times
• 24-hour display
• Simple calendar
• Month

Specifications:

• Power reserve: 72 hours
• Frequency: 3 Hz
• Manual winding with stopwork
• 55 jewels
• 432 components

Displays:

• Central hour and minute display
• PAC-MAN as the hour indicator on the 24-hour dial
• Sunrise time indicated by the position of the ghost’s eyes, and sunset time indicated by the position of the big cookie
• Date at 6 o’clock

Case and dial:

• Diameter: 39 mm
• Thickness: 9.5 mm
• Water resistance: 30m
• PT950 platinum case
• Onyx dial
• PAC-MAN maze rendered in translucent tampography
• Ghosts and fruit hand-painted
• Aesthetic faithful to the original 1980 game version
• Krayon cartouche, PAC-MAN-inspired pixelated logo and typography
• Hand-stitched black alligator leather strap
• PT950 platinum pin buckle