Hybrid Design Approach

When designing labyrinths I tend to think like a player: “what would be an interesting route to go through this grid?” A more pertinent question whilst designing through the route is “how does this route segment the grid and provide challenge to the player?” Asking these questions should be in addition to thinking about how walls constrain and how multiple entrances provide challenge.

It’s difficult to keep all of these things in mind at the same time. Learning from an earlier blog post, I think that’s why it’s important to have several grids drawn at the same time to experiment with multiple ideas at the same time.

Working on a route for this puzzle was interesting. I tried to simultaneously think about how I wanted the route to wind through the grid, but also how that route would split the grid up into smaller rooms. At times with a 6x6 grid it can feel like you are splitting the grid into smaller 3x3 grids which are simple to solve.

For this one I concentrated on what that segmenting would do and how the player might be able to spot those patterns. Starting from the corner of the grid instead of the centre gave more flexibility for the route to wind around the space.

Following this I added one more entrance on the left hand side but because of the wall placement it was diffiuclt to add another without it failing immediately upon an early trial by the player.