Rainbow Maze

Links

• Archived Ludum Dare page
• Timelapse
• Source

Description

This is a fast-paced exploration-like game (or however you'd like to play it). The world is a maze. Everything in the game is always shown on screen (including manual and history). You need to get to the end of the maze, but since the world is big, you will use a magnifier to see yourself and your surroundings.

** Chrome is highly recommended **
(Firefox doesn't render text efficiently, still need to optimize this somehow)

Controls:
* Mouse to control magnifier
** Drag to move magnifier
** Scroll to zoom
** Drag + scroll to resize magnifier
** Drag map to focus magnifier on part of maze
* WASD/Arrows to move
* Space/X to jump
* R to reset to nearest checkpoint
* Drag + R to reset to focused checkpoint

No worries, you can always look at the tutorial, since that is shown at any time.


EDIT:
Thanks for all the great feedback (in advance). I spend a long time on level/maze generation. It should be always solvable, since there is one way from beginning to end. Shortcuts from this path can be quicker, but can be dead ends.

I wasn't happy with the game until very late in the jam. Once the rainbow coloring was added it felt wayy better even though the controls weren't what I wanted them to be yet.

I hope to improve it by:
* Smoothing out the controls. Wall jumping isn't satisfying and sometimes you jump sideways when you're standing against a wall. I'd also like the ball to be driven by realistic physics so that the controls feel more like Nightsky.
* Adding better sound for the ball.
* Adding chill DnB music (I think this is fitting)
* Making the maze easier by putting the checkpoints on the 'main path'.
* Making the maze more interesting by:
** Adding spikes/sawblades. This should make the magnifier more useful.
** Having random elements in each room, so the rooms aren't as repeated as they are now.
** Some pebble at dead-ends to go quickly back to where you were, leaving some kind of fireworks behind.
* Some way to keep the magnifier out of your way.
* Do something about the tutorial. I could probably leave out most of the magnifier controls if the magnifier automatically moves and has decent starting values (zoom-level, size, etc).

Anyway, all of your feedback is greatly appreciated. Let me know what you think!