Mazenez - Maze of Machines

A long long time ago, back in 2005 a lonely student got the idea to write a game editor that will allow people to easily created 3D games using only JavaScript. The project turns out to be a success for his honours project, however this student quickly learned the following year that his career will take up a lot of his time and energy so that development on this project was stopped.

This young man also got married and had babies so that free time for hobby projects became even less and eventually all his big dreams faded away.

7 years later this man ended up in depression and eventually got booked off sick which forced his busy life to come to a brief pause. For the first time in many years he got the chance to look at different game engines again and how the technology developed during the years that he was stuck in his career. Guess what did he discovered?

His big dream of creating a game editor was realized in the form of Unity 3D! This was exactly what he was busy building back in the days and even better in many ways.

He decided to created Pacman as an experiment. The first basic version completed within the first week. He had so much fun in creating this game that he just had to add more stuff to it and experiment more creative ideas.

Slowly but gradually “Pacman” got more features like an artificially intelligence, the ability to play for both sides, many new strategic game rules, improved graphics, a new theme a story with characters and eventually the project grew into what we know today as Mazenez.

Comments

  • This is the first version of Mazenez... but hey it looks like Pacman. That is because it originally WAS Pacman but has ever since grew into a unique game play experience.
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  • edited
    Here are more screenshots of how the Mazenez currently look...

    You can also find a demonstration video, the website and the Facebook Page for more info.

    Download the game for free at the Apple App Store or the Windows Store or at Amazon Underground.

    Follow these instructions on how to install Amazon Underground for free on your Android.
    Screenshot 4-3 Details.jpg
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    Screenshot 4-3 Multi-Tasking.jpg
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    Screenshot 4-3 Scenarios.jpg
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    Screenshot 16-9 Story Security.jpg
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  • My 7 year old's version of the same game.
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  • Welcome :) Seeing as your game is already "out", are you looking for feedback? What are your personal goals for this project? This post?

    I personally don't have Android so can't play it, but I just wanted to holler :)
  • edited
    This game currently runs on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile.

    I am also considering a Desktop version (Windows, Linux, MacOS and maybe Facebook) but currently it is meant to be played on touch screens so I will have to be creative to figure out what keys will work the best otherwise I am just going to leave it to mouse point and click. Suggestions are welcome. Also I am not sure if it is worth the effort, because currently I am only focusing to improve the game play experience.

    I am also looking for general feedback on how the game could be improved.

    From the previous Make Game SA event I got feedback that:

    1) The story has too much text.
    2) It is hard to find the "viruses" when the disappear under the black clouds -> based on this feedback I have already made an improvement that I am currently busy releasing and will soon appear in all stores.
    3) The detected cells should not highlight the walls as it confuses the player -> fixed
    4) A detected "virus" should be indicated visually to the player -> fixed
    5) The colours are wrong. Red should always indicate the enemy regardless on which side you play. Not sure if it is worth the trouble to change all the screens, icons, graphics, textures, story, etc? Suggestions are welcome here.
    6) The early "level" are too big and too slow.
    7) The game is too hard to play -> I have added "tips" which include screenshots. I am also considering in game tips but I don't want to annoy the player with too many popups.

    Any other suggestion are welcome.
  • Hey @Nancy well done on getting a game up on all the store fronts. It is clear that a ton of effort and love has gone into this project. May I request a Windows build, it is just the most convenient way for me to test games. I have no problem playing the game with a mouse :)

    Ok, so here is some feedback based on the video and other media available, basically the stuff that should be enticing me to download and play your game.

    -- Watching the first part of the video I gather that the objective of the game is to navigate a nanite towards the exit. Then the latter part of the video seems to introduce a new mechanic, hacking. However I have no idea what the objective of hacking is, is it still to navigate to the exit? Are viruses just a type of nanite? How does upgrading help you? What I'm trying to say is I'm a little confused as to what the core gameplay mechanic is, and how hacking, viruses and upgrading enhance that mechanic.
    -- I understand that the numbers in blocks indicate by how much they slow you down, but using hexadecimal to represent that might be confusing for the majority of your audience (especially kids). Even I would have to think twice before deciding whether route "7,B,9" is better than "9,9,A". Is there a reason why the numbers can't range from 0 -> 9, or better yet 0 -> 3?
    -- The graphics don't really catch your attention. The backgrounds are grey on black and the only colour provided is by the light of the viruses/nanites, which is minimal. With no real juice, or visual feedback when units collide, upgrade, damage or repair cells, it's hard to tell at a glance how important any of these activities are relative to others.

    Obviously some of these questions could be answered by playing the game, but if people are confused before they even download your game, they may never get that far.

    Good luck with your project, and hope it fulfils the goals you set for it.
  • edited
    @pieter Thank you very much for your feedback. This is the kind of information I was looking for. Actually the original marketing video is at this YouTube link, but it is out-dated and the game no longer looks like that. It also mentions that the game is "offline" which is no longer true since the latest version include IAP's, voting, etc. That is the reason why I removed the video from the website, but I believe it would perhaps answer most of your questions especially regarding the theme/objective of the game.

    The demonstration video was created for a competition where they required that the video must be a demonstration of the game with actual screen shots so I tried to make it a kind of a "walk-through" to demonstrate HOW to play the game rather than advertise the game.

    I guess I should probably create a more advertising-like video to publish on the stores?

    The hexadecimal system was include to make the game more "educational" as per competition requirement and also to teach children that the normal 0-9 decimal system is not the only system that exists. I tried to make it easier by colouring the numbers so that you should look out for the "warmer" colours, however based on @pierre 's feedback warm (red) = danger = stay away. Maybe I should swap the colours around so that the player rather goes for the cold numbers to move faster? But then again, maybe I should just stick with the plain decimal system that everyone knows as @pieter suggested?

    The story also explains the theme and the purpose of each mission, but then again do people actually read the story? Should I remove the story? How can I better communicate how to play the game and what the theme is about without dumping pages of text onto the player?

    Regarding the "dull" grey mazes. Actually the more advance scenarios has more colours and the advance missions too. I deliberately made the first few missions grey not to distract new players, because the colours do have meaning in the game. The current version works like this:

    yellow colours = "vulnerable viruses"
    red colours = "dangerous viruses"
    blue colours = "security"
    green = "bugs"

    If I for example make the first level "blue", it will look like a "security" level and the security might even be camouflaged? That is just my reasoning when I created the game, maybe I am wrong and should try out a more colourful approach and test what the effect is?
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