In late 2014 I started developing yet another labyrinth game, I was obsessed with this simple design. Looking back to it I iterated at least 5 games on the same topic, up today, I still don't have a proper game to play though, just piles of design on what may or may not work. For this particular game, I still have some of the builds I did for the game, and it's possible to see all the evolutions in the design, I decided to put some of them here so you can watch the evolution of this game...

As a properly trained programmer, the first build is always number 0. It was here that I learned the difference between labyrinth and maze (I leave that up to you), but I didn't interpret it as the warning sign it actually was, so I kept developing, no wonder that the name of the game ended up being Labyrinth Madness. I'm not saying I went insane developing the game, it was not a hard game to develop, actually a fun experience, I'm just saying I was insane developing such a game. The first build was just a test for the algorithm that generates the level, a really nice screensaver. (alt+f4 to exit XD)

I changed the algorithm that was generating the level, now the walls of the labyrinth are randomly chosen and lowered, the first version was just running as deep as possible in the labyrinth and then starting again. The point of view during the creation of the labyrinth is very confusing, I'll end up changing it multiple times. The first versions of the game were developed with Unity, I switched to Unreal Engine during the development of this game. (now it's possible to press exit to ... exit)

In this version, I cleaned some of the many bugs that were afflicting the game. I decided to switch to a night setting, the player is able to use a light to navigate through the labyrinth, it was here that I started to think of some weird mechanics, supposedly the labyrinth was designed to have little lights, that were keeping the player's light on, but also his sanity, so if the player loses the direction weird stuff would happen: other people walking around or weird, objects appearing on the floor, gravity shifts... I remember one of the events was supposed to be a whale falling from the sky... so here were the name Labyrinth Madness came out.

Just some needed graphical improvements, each of the column of the level had it's own layer of leaves on top of it, the problem was that it was just put around the pillar, not a part of it (I was still not very good with materials) and it was causing some z-fighting (the leaves trembling on the walls). The pillars of the game are all equals, but they are just randomly turned around to look different.

Another build all about graphical improvements: now there was an actual day and night cycle, the color of the leaves was random and the birdview was scrapped in favor of a quick look at the map of the level. The map is a texture generated from the actual layout of the map, is dynamic so it's drawn as the map get generated.

This is the last playable version of the game, and the last one to be built with Unity. I changed the usuals couple of things but mostly I implemented the audio inside the game, always one of the last things. It's possible to hear a crow inside the game, it was supposed to have a gameplay element attached to it as part of one of the visions of insanity of the player. Let's be clear, it was not supposed to be a horror full of jumpscares, probably only very creepy.

At this point, I got to know a different Engine (an Unreal one), the fight between Unity and Unreal it's still open and very harsh, but at the time, I was struggling with the leaves in this labyrinth and I saw how simple it was to implement such a thing in Unreal, I jumped the boat immediately, even if Unreal asked for 20 euros every month at the time. I rebuild the game and add some improvements, I was aiming for mobile at the time, so I don't have any playable build, the only thing left is this video, and it's simple to understand the difference between the two version of the game. Some months later Unity sprinted back in the competition with the release of the fifth version, but I left this game abandoned and pass to something else.

I hope to get back to this game soon, it's beautiful and simple. I have to say: if you are reading these words, and you actually downloaded and played all the version of the game, I'm impress by your commitment. I hope you had fun, it was fun for me to see all my old works still working.