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Maze (6-2-82) / MAZV / MINOTRThis is the last version of Paul's unreleased maze game (called Maze, Amaze, and Minotaur at different points in development) that was worked on before being abandoned. While the maze generation algorithm and the wall creation/destruction ideas were eventually incorporated into Entombed, many gameplay elements are unique to this prototype. When Paul was tasked with stripping out the gameplay in order to isolate the maze generation algorithm for Steve Sidley he used this version of Maze (originally called MAZV) as a starting point and renamed the file MINOTR.There are 42 different variations in this demo, each sporting a different type of maze/gameplay combination. There are both one and two player combinations like in Entombed, but here the two players have different abilities. The first player is always positioned in the center of the screen vertically and can only move to the left and right. However they can control which direction the maze scrolls by pushing up and down. The second player can move freely in any direction but cannot control the maze to any extent.The goal in the one player variations appears to be to
simply move through the maze. There are no zombies to
attack the player and they control the scrolling so they cannot
get pushed off the screen. In the two player variations
the goal is for the first player to touch the second player
(referred to in the documentation as hunter/hunted). When
this happens the game will freeze. Each players speed can
be controlled by the difficultly switches (A is normal speed, B
is fast speed). It's also worth noting that the first
player also cannot scroll the second player off the screen. As in Entombed, the player can build or destroy walls
with the push of a button, but it works a bit differently in
this demo. Here, depending on the variation, the player
performs only one type of action. There are variations
where the button does nothing, builds, destroys, or does a
'reverse'. Reverse is just a fancy way of saying that if
there's a wall the button destroys it and if there's a space the
button builds a wall. This is how it works in Entombed
(called a Make-Break) but in this demo the player can do each
action an infinite number of times. The first twenty variations take place in a randomly
generated maze, similar to Entombed. Variations twenty one
through forty two however take place in what the documentation
describes as 'an obstacle course' which basically means the maze
now consists of small rectangles and squares instead of long
twisting passages. One final thing worth noting about this
prototype is that each player is a simple square with an arrow
that points in the direction they're facing (so you know which
wall you're interacting with) instead of a stick figure as in
Entombed.
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