Maze Guard

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About the Game:

Players assume the role of the minotaur, who is housing his half sister Ariadne. As her beauty is known across the land, countless admirers try to win  her over, which led to her searching for a refugee in her animalistic brother’s maze. In exchange for warding off the unwanted adorers and providing food, she spends time with him and reads him stories.

To keep her saturated, the minotaur can collect grapes spawning throughout the maze, which avoids forcing her to leave the maze in need of a meal.

Since he’s also a big and impressive character, a loud roar is enough to scare the intruders away. These enter the labyrinth at four different points, walking on pre-planned routes towards the center. If an enemy reaches Ariadne’s hideout, they occupy one of eight kneel spots in front of her pagode and start romancing her.
With the first declaration of devotion, a timer starts ticking down, and marking game over. On reaching zero, Ariadne gives in to her suitors‘ pleas, leaving the labyrinth.

As the unwanted guests‘ numbers increase, a minimap helps players to keep track. To not fully render the maze-factor of the labyrinth useless, the player’s own position is not shown.

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My tasks:

Enemy behavior:
Besides navigating the maze, the enemies have two more actions:
After arriving at Ariadne’s pagode, they move to a free kneeling spot and start praise her. With the first enemy engaging in this behavior, a “refusal-timer” begins to count down. On reaching zero, Ariadne is annoyed and gives in to the admirers‘ pleas- GAME OVER.
Should the enemy collide with the Minotaurs roar, they get scared and despawn with a comical run-away-animation.

Route walker:
In communication with the game designers, a waypoint-network was set up, to plan concrete paths. For each of the four entry points, they set up four different routes to the center.
For more diverse playthroughs, the enemies spawn with a randomly chosen texture and pick one of four routes offered by their spawn-position, at random as well.

Breakable walls:
To widen the variations and give the players more possibilities, the maze contains breakable walls. By dashing through such a wall, marked by visible cracks, the player can navigate the maze more freely- but also open new paths for the enemies. On arrival at a broken wall, the enemies randomly choose to either follow their original path, or pick one of two new routes.

Attack enemies:
Instead of a fight system, the pacifist Minotaur scared the uninvited visitors off with a mighty roar. This roar is visualized by an expanding and afterwards shrinking sphere, accompanied by a suiting sound- and triggers the enemies it overlaps with, to flee the labyrinth.

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Changed plans:

Food / hunger system:
To increase the challenge of keeping admirers away from Ariadne, the Minotaurs half-sister also needs food. Symbolized by four grapes, and a decreasing bar, players need to collect the grapes that spawn all over the maze, to keep her happy. If she runs out of food, the game is over as well, as she has to leave the labyrinth.
This marks the realized content, as further implementing thirst and applying the same system to the Minotaur, would have caused too much entanglement and demanded further balancing.

Multiple level / story mode:
After keeping the intruders out for a day, the level would end with a cutscene and a new day would start. The maze would be partially repaired, slightly change ever so often and get bigger, so the players would not get too accustomed with the labyrinths layout.
Besides the current voiceover, with the clearance of each level, new information of the situation’s background story would be revealed. Variations for the intro, Game Over and Win-scene would have been recorded to introduce new characters, like different enemy types.
Limiting it to one level left room to develop a fairly narrative game with cutscenes and voiceover.

Enemy variations:
Besides enemies that strictly follow the set paths with given speed, variations were planned. From enemies that would be faster, to stronger enemies that would not be scared off with one roar, to those that could hide.
A certain type should have been able to navigate without a path and explore the maze himself, marking ways that led to dead ends and enabling others of his type to find the quickest route.

Traps / secret passages:
Players as well as enemies should have been able to set traps or fall into them. They should also have been enabled to find secret passages and make use of those shortcuts.
Highscore System:
Depending on how close enemies got to Ariadne, or for how long they admired her, the plates should have generated a score, which would have been displayed in a scoreboard.