and we built a maze just like everyone
else on our continent,” Swan says. “I
think Minecraft always guides people
to mazes as the simple orthogonal
nature and procedural scenery looks
maze-like to start with.”
Talking to Swan reveals the
diversity of approaches to maze
building, some of which chime
intriguingly with more mundane
level-design questions. There are
‘weave mazes’, for example, where the
paths loop under or over each other,
which is a popular gambit in some
multiplayer shooters. ‘Braid mazes’
have many paths but no dead ends.
These can be especially tough for
players, Swan notes, because “mentally
we never ‘close off’ parts of the maze
as solved”. And then there are
Recursive fractal mazes that harbour
perfect smaller copies of themselves. “I
think I’ve seen this touched on in some
games but it can quickly spiral out of
control in complexity – I haven’t seen
such a concept applied to a multiplayer
first-person shooter, but it would be a
fascinating experiment!”
For Arin Martinian, a 21-year-old
musician, mathematician, and author
from Massachusetts, the trick to maze
design is giving the player the sense
that they’re getting somewhere,
however sprawling and knotty the
structure. Martinian draws a
comparison with incremental games
such as Cookie Clicker. “Even if the
entire game revolves around clicking a
single cookie and watching numbers go
up, unlocking new things keeps the
game interesting, and each buy gives
the player the same satisfaction as
solving a single sudoku puzzle. So
when I build mazes, I like to provide
landmarks, not just for ease ofnavigation, but also to capture that
sense of progression.”
Martinian has been building
Minecraft maps since the young age of- If you have a poor sense of
direction, their mazes may sound like
the stuff of nightmares: highlights
include the formidable Prismatic
Puzzler, a seven-storey coloured glass
tower that resembles a Death Star
focusing array. But if Martinian’s mazes
are mind-boggling they are also
considerately built, with bridges
providing vantage points and a range of
strong landmarks. All are designed to
teach some measure of spatial
reasoning and problem-solving. “When
a maze has you doing this, instead of
just blindly hugging the right wall and
hoping you eventually reach the exit, I
consider that a great success.”
All are designed
to teach some
measure of
spatial
reasoning and
problem-solving
Gamenamexxxx
FE ATURE
A maze of flesh
and bone
representing
summer 2020,
created by
DeuxiemeCarlin.Shalidor’s Maze
in Skyrim, home
to one of the
game’s
Dragonshouts.