minotorus by AceArcher

You are Theseus, the prince of Athens. You are fed up with Cretan King Minos demanding seven men as tribute every seven years, so you go yourself this time to brave the Labyrinth and the Minotaur within. The beast is fierce and the maze is winding, but you have been blessed by Athena. No matter how many times you fall, you will wake up again just before entering the Labyrinth. Use each attempt to learn more about the Labyrinth, the Minotaur, and the one person who could help you, Princess Ariadne. How many tries will it take you to break the loop?



BUGFIX UPDATE 10/6/20
I have fixed the camera in the WebGL version! It should now actually be playable. This wasn't a problem in the Windows build or in the Editor, so I didn't catch it until people started playing it after submission. I also was notified that the golden thread, which was supposed to save between rounds if you hit a checkpoint, was not working. It was working the last time I tested it, but apparently a last-minute fix for a different issue broke this feature! Both the WebGL and downloadable versions should be fully fixed as long as I didn't accidentally break anything else at 5pm Monday without realizing it.
BUGFIX UPDATE 10/7/20
Apparently the camera needs different sensitivity between the beginning area and the maze itself. I have absolutely no idea why this would be the case, as they are in the same scene, but I've fixed it. Also, at some point the player's animations broke, meaning the player couldn't attack. Again, I don't know when or why this broke, but it's fixed now. Also, fixing the animations caused the camera to sometimes either clip through walls or show the inside of the player's head. Finally, the game window was the wrong size, making it impossible to see some of the important UI information.
| Youtube | https://games-by-kylie.itch.io/minotorus |
| Youtube | https://games-by-kylie.itch.io/minotorus |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/minotorus |
Ratings
| Overall | 1596th | 2.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1580th | 2.395⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1439th | 2.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1387th | 2.912⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1386th | 2.711⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
There's a promising idea here, but it needs fleshing work.
This was one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in a long time. I know that sounds overly dramatic, but this is the first time in my life that I've ever experienced motion sickness while playing a video game, and this includes a lot of VR titles since I was an early adopter of VR. I think this was due to a combination of factors from the cramped corridors, repetitive textures, the movement speed, and the poor performance of the html5 version. I had to take a break and look off into distance to compose myself. I don't know if just fixing the lag would circumvent this but I think you should definitely make the corridors less cramped and change the textures on the walls.
Apart from the motion sickness problem, there are some serious design issues that seemed hostile, like you were punishing the player and didn't want them to beat the game.
For starters, the maze itself is way too large. I did manage to get to the end of the maze and face the minotaur, but the journey became really boring and tedious the longer it dragged on. The basic premise of the game isn't bad, and it's actually kind of fun if you commit to it. I really wanted to get to the end and after getting the gold string, it became kind of fun retracing my steps, knowing that with every attempt I was making a lot of progress. This feeling didn't last when I realized how large the maze was and towards the end, just retracing my steps and running back to where I died took way too long and killed any interest I had in continuing.
Another major issue is how brutal the dead ends are. If you make a wrong turn, you have to backtrack a really long distance. It felt like you were severely punishing me for making a mistake in a game where it is impossible to avoid mistakes since you didn't provide any way to figure out where to go apart from trial and error.
When I got to the boss fight, I tried to kill it with my fists and realized it is impossible. I got it down to half health by punching it until it decided to attack me and then I died. I thought I would just have to run back and finish it off, but when I got back to the fight, he had full health. At that point I quit, but later I realized that I probably should have talked to the female npc more. It wasn't clear that she would give me more items after the string. After finally getting to the end of the maze, and nearly throwing up from motion sickness, I was so frustrated that I didn't think about talking to Ariadne to get a weapon. I replayed the game after this rage quit to see all of her dialogue, and I got the crown and sword, but I was not going to go through the maze again.
I didn't think walking through a maze would be very fun, but there was a point early on where it was. When I got the string, it became a lot more enjoyable and it made me want to get to the end since I know had a way to overcome the challenge. I think if you figure out a way to add more tools that elicit the same response, then you might have a solid premise for a full game. Similar to the felling of progression in a metroidvania but without the combat.
Now obviously you had very limited time to make this game and a lot these issues would have been avoided with more play testing. If the maze was smaller, the minotaur had less health, the corridors weren't so cramped and the textures so repetitive, this would have been a very enjoyable jam game
As for level design, you should try to avoid mazes as much as possible, as by design they keep the player from knowing where they need to go, which ends up getting frustrating and feeling like no progress is being made. This usually makes players resort to certain methods of getting through them causing them to forgo any and all story beats or other useful things that they might find. For example, in this kind of maze, all a player has to do to make it to the end is to pick either the left or right wall and follow it without skipping any (potential) dead ends or turns. In this sense, not only are mazes not very good level design, but they are also pretty hard to actually design in a way that isn't easily defeated by a cheap strategy.
Otherwise, good job