Maze

About the game

Simple maze game for Pico-8. This game started its life as a small javascript easter egg on my website 404-page where users can solve a small maze to get back to front page. This simplicity makes it perfect for Pico-8. Add a timer and movement counter, some simple sounds and the game is complete! Nice, easy, fun and low stress project. ☺️

Gameplay

Use arrow keys for movement. Start position is always at the top left corner, but the goal position will vary. Difficulty level will set the maze size. Easy is 10x10 grid, normal is 15x15 and hard is almost full screen with 21x20 grid.

Also, every maze is unique! This means that timer and movement counter are not very fair system to measure players performance, as luck plays a big role in the game. Nevertheless it's fun to see how long time and how many moves it took to reach the goal.

About the maze

This game uses the recursive backtracking algorithm to generate the maze. This algorithm works by starting from a random cell, carving out paths and backtracking when it hits a dead end. The result is a maze that looks truly random, often with long corridors that are typical for this algorithm.

Controls

Standard Pico-8 controls are 🅾️ = z-key, and ❎ = x-key on keyboard. ➡️⬅️⬆️⬇️ are arrow keys. Press Enter to pause the game and access the settings like sound and volume.