Getting Lost In My July One Game Amazing Mazes

zacharyJul 25, 2014

So I got a headstart on my July One Game and boy did it make a difference. The past few months have pushed me to the last week of the month to even be able to start, but this month, I was able to start in the second week and I finished with plenty of time to spare.

So let me introduce you to my latest One Game, Amazing Mazes. Sorry for the bad pun, but I just couldn’t figure out a clever name. Amazing Mazes is simple. There are four mazes and you must navigate them. Find the flag at the end and win. Beat your best time. All that kind of stuff.

Amazing Mazes is designed to be a Gameboy style game. It only has 4 colors and fits a 160x144px screen. Those screenshots are full size. There are a couple of sounds, but not too many.

I decided to go with a Gameboy style this month because I want to participate in the Gameboy Game Jam first thing in August. So I needed to prep myself for that frame of mind.

I also had fun designing the mazes. I vaguely remember drawing mazes as a kid and I never really had fun solving them either. However, actually sitting down and making the mazes was a lot of fun. I only made four, but I could easily spend a few days making many more, but I have other work to do.

When I made the mazes, I would place the start and finish of the maze, then draw the “correct” path between them. Then I would put in all the deadends and false paths. As I made them, I think I got better because the last two I made I really got lost. My first test runs took me nearly 5 minutes to get through maze 4 compared to the 2 minutes to complete maze 1.

One thing that I am very proud of is that Amazing Maze is my second game that feels like a complete game. There is nothing about this game that I think could be done better or anything that is really missing. I think of the things that are missing they are relatively minor and easy to add in. These would be more mazes, included music, and maybe a few different characters. Like I said nothing major.

I still need to get on the ball and work on an online score keeping tool. I would love to see how quickly people are solving these mazes, but I still have not gotten around to doing that.

So that is it for this month. I really look forward to my August game as I will be knocking it out in the first week. This will give me plenty of time to work on other projects like my Kickstarter game and my September game.