Consider the state of a Pac-Man level:
Now, consider the level in terms of a 2D grid:
Each horizontal row may be treated as an array of ints:
cell contents code empty 0 small pellet 1 large pellet 2 cherry 3 wall 4 ghost area 5
int[] row0 = { 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 }; //top wall
int[] row1 = { 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 }; //next row from topA 2D array can thus be used to represent the entire level:
int[][] level = {
{ 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 },
{ 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 },
{ 4, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4 },
{ 4, 2, 4, 0, 0, 4, 1, 4, 0, 0, 0, 4, 1, 4, 4, 1, 4, 0, 0, 0, 4, 1, 4, 0, 0, 4, 2, 4 },
...rest not shown!...
};