Ascension (MV) Alpha 8.0 [Labyrinth]

As anticipated, this stage took considerably more time to pull together than the last few. In keeping with my new commitment to stay grounded, it's not everything the Labyrinth could be, metaphysically speaking, but it's a functioning level (perhaps for the first time ever), that allows me to tell the story I want to tell. Navigating the maze remains a challenge, but hopefully one that will not be so frustrating as to prevent the player from advancing (which is its purported purpose - but the story relies on the player solving it). Here's what I did to make the maze what it currently is:

To start with, I generated a brand new maze using the latest version of the Daedalus program that I'd used before. I actually stitched my Labyrinth together from four separate mazes, to represent four quadrants, although they are integrated so as to function as one whole. The maze loops horizontally and vertically to create the illusion of being even larger than it actually is. At its deepest point, you are never more than 80 branches from the center (and end of the level) - and if that number still seems large to you, a lot of those branches are short dead ends that can be quickly ruled out.

For that matter, I've implemented a "marking" system, where you can pick up rocks scattered about the maze, to carry around and place, at your convenience, anywhere within the maze in the shape of an arrow pointing in one of the four cardinal directions, or an "x", to help you solve the maze. I figure this will be a good way to make the maze more interactive, to let the player feel like he is using his wits to narrow down the pathways, rather than merely stumbling down the same blind alleys again and again, until randomly hitting on the solution.

I've also added a functioning compass - just for the fun of the challenge of seeing if I could. At any junction within the maze, where the path splits and you have to make a choice of which direction to go, you can press the Page Down key (or whatever it's mapped to), and an icon will momentarily display on screen, pointing the direction you must go to reach the center of the maze (for curious RPG Makers, it keys on Region ID). As this defeats the very purpose of the maze, I don't intend for it to be a normal part of the level, but you can certainly use it for testing purposes if you get lost. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to leave it in the final game as a sort of cheat or Easter egg.

As far as difficulty goes, if you play the game on Easy Mode, your only challenge is to solve the maze (I can't really make it simpler than that, without undermining the integrity of the level). Normal Mode includes the addition of wandering clouds of fog (that you might remember from previous incarnations of this level). If the player touches the fog, he will be scattered to a random position within the maze (and there is always the chance that you will get lucky and wind up close to the center, so it's not all bad). These clouds of fog may bar your path at some points, but they dissipate after being touched (and after you are scattered), and also temporarily vanish whenever it starts to rain.

The only additional challenge in Hard Mode is a screen overlay that reduces your visibility a little bit (though not too much, I think), so you can't see quite as far from your current position in the maze. In all cases, the only thing you have to do to end the level is reach the center of the maze - and the actual pathways in the maze never change (which is something I'd originally wanted to do). To reach the secret bonus on Hard Mode, however (which right now doesn't do anything, but will contribute to unlocking the secret level in the final game), you have to navigate back and forth through the maze to find four switches that open a gated path to a restricted chamber within the maze.

Additional note: You may be gratified to hear that I've increased the player's movement speed for this stage (essentially making "run" the walking speed), because in testing out the maze, I quickly discovered that I had the shift ("run") key constantly held down. That will no longer be necessary. (And if running is still too slow for you, pressing the "run" key will now enable you to positively break into a sprint :-p).

Ascension (MV) Alpha 8.0 (including all stages up to Chapter 10 - Labyrinth)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Note: This update also fixes a graphical oversight (due to a changed filename) I noticed in Sheol, as well as eliminates an extraneous bat in Chaos that I had placed in order to test and fix a glitch resulting in the bats interfering with the moving platforms, as well as cleaning up a few other minor testing oversights.