website/content/about.md

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About Sketchy Maze	false

Sketchy Maze is a "drawing-based maze game" themed around hand-drawn maps on paper.

You can draw your own custom maps, freehand or with some basic drawing tools, and then drag and drop some "doodads" such as Buttons, Keys and Doors onto your map to spice it up. You can use any colors you want, and say which colors should be solid and which are fire, and draw anything you want. Make your level a castle or a cave, your imagination is the limit!

If the built-in doodads aren't enough, you can also make your own! There's documentation in the Guidebook how to make a custom doodad, and there (will be) some example doodads you can build here.

This game is still in alpha release mode and it has a few major features still to add.

Sketchy Maze is a "Forever Project"

I have a list of features I really want for the "1.0" launch of the game, but I'll plan on continuing development for as long as I find it interesting and will release free updates to everybody who buys the game just once.

I've always wanted to make a videogame, and always liked to learn about game design and everything, but never actually made anything worthwhile until Sketchy Maze. Over time, I realized that I don't actually want to build "a video game," what I wanted was a game project. Something I could just work on and add features to, more of a game "platform," something long-term like Minecraft.

This page describes the initial set of features planned for the 1.0 and some ideas I have kicking around further down the road if all goes well.

Inspiration

I'm a 90's kid, and when I was growing up in the era of Sega Genesys and Super Nintendo games, I used to like to draw my own maps on paper of a 2D platformer style game. I'd borrow ideas from all sorts of videogames I liked, and draw some buttons that open a door across the level when pressed (and I'd draw a dotted line connecting the two so I don't forget), put in trapdoors and lava pits and slippery slopes and such, and then I'd "play" my level with my imagination.

When you're just drawing with a pen and paper, the maze can be anything you want. You can draw a castle or a cave, place little gizmos and traps throughout the level (doors, keys, buttons and things) to create puzzles. Do you want the red pixels to mean "fire" and burn the player? Or do you want to decorate the tops of "bloody" spikes with red? Either way, the 'fire' attribute on that color will do the job and you can draw whatever shape you want for your level hazards.

Mod Friendly

While the game ships with a handful of built-in doodads to spice up your level, you can also create your own and program them to do whatever you want, with JavaScript!

See Also

For more information about Sketchy Maze, please see the following links:

• The Guidebook site that ships as part of the game includes tons of end user documentation and screenshots. Be sure to check it out!
• The Frequently Asked Questions page will offer more information in a "Q&A" format.