Thanks for giving it a play!
You're quite right to point out all the mazes can get very repetitive. When I first started this project it was actually just to test to some procedural generation theory - originally it was just a never ending series of mazes! However, once I'd poured some significant time into it (this was back at the beginning of the first lockdown) I decided it was a waste to let it disappear into my bucket of unfinished projects which is when I started adding the story to it.
Originally I was looking at making it something like Alice in Wonderland, or one of the studio Ghibli stories. In fact the lead character was actually blonde to start with, but I changed her hair colour to make make her stand out more against the background. It also made her look more like American McGee's Alice, rather than Disney's
The character of the daughter is loosely based on Chihiro from Spirited Away. Coincidentally it also made the characters look a bit like friends of mine, which, as it turns out, influenced the game further down the line...
I'd also read somewhere a quote from Steven Spielberg who had said one of the keys to making a fantasy story believable is to start it founded in real life - before dropping your characters down a rabbit hole (or into a talking TV
), which is where the train ride comes from (that and, again, Spirited Away). The character of the Professor is actually an extension of an invisible character in another one of my games
Mow Problem - I had actually considered making the entire experience basically one large advert for it, but wisely decided not to in the end
With this in mind it was a fairly logical step to add more mini-games, platform sections and collectibles and so on, to try and break the mazes up as much as possible. It worked to a certain extent, but I never finished some of the planned features such as the 'greenhouse' mode, where you could plant the seeds found in the main game, and nurture them in an entirely separate context - kind of like a plant based Tamagotchi. I may revisit this idea sometime in the future and add it via an update.
In the end it was just a fun project to make, and has proven quite popular with people who play it with their children - possibly because it only takes an hour or so to complete and can be done with a short attention span
If I add any new features, I'll be sure to post them here!
