Monster Maze

An adventure puzzler game based on ancient Greek mythology. Navigate the multilevel labyrinth by torchlight, in search of the mythical Minotaur, but beware of what lurks in the dark!

Comment

Inspiration: Taking inspiration from my previous career in architectural design, I wanted to create the first in what I hope to be a series of Architectural puzzles, combined with action and adventure. A recent holiday to Crete gave me the idea of basing the game on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.

What it does: Users can explore the peaceful surroundings before entering the Labyrinth. Be sure to grab a torch before entering as it get dark very quickly, and undead enemies can be found lurking around every corner. The user must navigate all 7 levels of the maze, defeating enemies and avoiding falling through holes in the floor before facing off with the Minotaur on the roof of the tower.

How we built it: I started by creating all 7 levels in blender and testing the navigation before iterating into various existing HW templates before settling on Graveyard Bash as my baseplate. I utilised the NPC enemy pooling and spawning to create 3 waves of enemies across each of the 7 floors. As we can't currently bring in our own animated characters, I used the Gen AI tools in HW to create a Minotaur boss, piece by piece, building a custom rig using HW empties and in engine recorded animations. I used a combination of my own models, built and textured in blender, the HW Gen AI suite and public assets to create the entire scene.

Challenges we ran into: Getting to grips with typescript as I'm typically a node based programmer. Also previously mentioned, the inability to import custom animated models led to an interesting work around for my final Minotaur boss.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: Generally being able to create a game which is fun and managed to hold the attention of my 14 year old, gamer daughter after only a few weeks of using horizon worlds.

What we learned: The Graveyard Bash template was a really great resource for beginners to learn how to create a complete mobile/VR enabled experience and has taught a great deal about using typescript and the general framework required to build at this scale.

What's next for Monster Maze: Lots more testing, an ending, implementing wearables and purchasable items, more refinement to the gameplay and additional side quests, plus doors to other ancient Greek mythology themed Architectural mazes.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates