The Twisting Labyrinth
Role: Concept Creator, Project Lead, Lead Developer
Setting: Academic Group Project (5 person team)
Timeframe: January-May 2022
Technologies: Unity (C#), Trello
Description: The Twisting Labyrinth is a top-down 2D RPG where players explore a constantly shifting, procedurally generated maze. Players navigate the maze, collect items, battle enemies, and try to escape a prison-like world that becomes more dangerous the closer you get to the exit.
This was the first game design group project I worked on at RIT. The concept was inspired by the Maze Runner movies, as well as games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Hades. I really liked the idea of a game where you have a home base in the center of a maze and must work your way out by mapping it out as you explore — with the twist being that the maze is constantly shifting, making that task far from simple.
Making this game taught me a lot about gameplay systems design, project scope, and teamwork. I started with lofty goals that, given our timeline, we just couldn't fully realize. This experience helped me understand how to set realistic goals — a lesson I've carried into every project since. One of the most challenging tasks was designing the maze generation system to be randomized, non-repetitive, and guaranteed to produce a solvable path even as the maze shifted. I learned how to break that down into smaller components and build a modular solution that worked seamlessly with the rest of the codebase.
My Contributions:
- Created a modular procedural maze generation system with a guaranteed path to the exit
- Designed enemy encounter logic and item drop tables
- Developed a dynamic difficulty scaling system
- Implemented a day/night cycle
- Programmed player locomotion, including an instant dash ability
- Created a save/load system
- Came up with the original idea for the game and all of the core mechanics
- Managed the team using agile workflows and Trello
- Gave weekly sprint reports to our professor
Screenshots:
