Tips for designing amazing, user-friendly mazes

Introduction So you want your maze designs to be better suited for your players? Do you want your mazes to be accessible for beginners, yet increase difficulty as your players advance through your game? Then look no further, as this article provides you some tips to level-up your maze design. You see, the construction of…


Introduction

So you want your maze designs to be better suited for your players? Do you want your mazes to be accessible for beginners, yet increase difficulty as your players advance through your game?

Then look no further, as this article provides you some tips to level-up your maze design.

You see, the construction of user-friendly (digital) mazes requires a fine balance between challenge, fun, and accessibility. With this article, my aim is to delve into the subtleties of maze creation, offering you insights and strategies for creating user-friendly mazes that engage your players while ensuring an intuitive and pleasant gaming experience.

Let’s get started!

Tips for designing user-friendly mazes

When designing mazes, the main thing to consider if you want to keep your players engaged is to gradually increase the difficulty of your mazes. You can do that by not only making your mazes larger as your players advance, but to also implement different gameplay elements to prevent your players from getting bored.

Let’s describe above and other helpful tips that you can use when designing your mazes.

1. Start with Simple Structures

Begin with basic maze designs before progressing to complex layouts. Gradually introduce new elements to the player step by step, without overwhelming them.

A simple maze design

You can increase the complexity of each of your maze structures by handing the player mazes of increasing size (rows vs columns) or by implementing specific gameplay elements that increase difficulty.

In the latter case, think of setting a time limit that the player must complete the maze in. Or you could implement smaller, but blind mazes. This little gameplay aspect increases the difficulty multi-fold, since now your players must navigate the maze blindly and/or have to memorize multiple paths if they want to complete your game.

The point is, if you want to design maze structures suited for beginners, don’t start with complex maze structures. Start with mazes that are (almost too) easy to complete, but increase difficulty as your player advances.

2. Create Clear Pathways

A very common mistake is to design your mazes with pathways that are too small. This makes it more difficult to navigate the maze and is prone to error; your player might visually get confused while following their path which can in ‘path jumping’, where the player accidentally ‘jumps over’ a wall and continues navigating the adjacent wall without them realizing.

Do not create your pathways that are too narrow. Even worse is when the width of the pathways is not consistent, such as in the image on the left.

To avoid the above problem, make sure that pathways within your maze are sufficiently wide to allow easy navigation. Avoid narrow corridors that might frustrate players or confuse them too often (unless that is your goal, of course).

3. Implement Distinctive Landmarks

This is especially handy for your players when navigating larger and more complex mazes. The larger the maze is, the easier it is to get lost in it.

In larger mazes, you can give your players some help by incorporate unique landmarks or visual cues within the maze so they can orient themselves. Recognizable points of reference can aid in navigation and reduce disorientation.

Blue structures (circled in red) act as distinct landmarks that players can use as a point of reference. Distinct landmarks helps your players to navigate through your maze.

In the image above, blue structures are placed in the maze for the players to use as a reference point. In case they get lost, they can start over from the reference points and try a different path.

4. Balance the Difficulty

Another tip for designing beginner-friendly maze structures, is to gradually increase difficulty levels as your players advance. This holds for all types of games and puzzles, if you care about increasing player engagement.

You can think of introducing new obstacles or challenges strategically to maintain engagement without causing excessive frustration for your players.

A more difficult maze is shown above. The arrows limit the player’s movement, making it more difficult to navigate the maze. The arrows indicate which direction the player must go if he/she walks over the arrow. Another way the arrows can make this maze more difficult, is by making it possible for the player to get in a loop inside the maze.

With mazes, the most common way to increase difficulty is to simply make the mazes larger and larger. The larger the maze is, the more difficult it will be to solve it.

5. Implement a Logical Structure

Another thing to take into consideration if you want your mazes designs to be accessible for beginners, is to let your mazes follow a logical pattern or theme. Randomness can be engaging, but a maze that follows a consistent internal logic makes it easier for players to predict potential pathways.

For example, in the beginning levels you can make the general path for navigating your mazes somewhat follow the same pattern. Let your mazes start from the top left and end at the bottom right, and let the general pattern for the path from beginning to end follow a diagonal line through the maze.

The shape of the correct path for each of the above mazes follows a logical pattern. In the abov examples, the correct path’s shape follows a diagonal line from the top left (maze entrance) to the bottom right (maze exit).

Use this same pattern (but not exactly the same path) for your beginner levels. As your players advance through the levels, you can implement larger and larger deviations to the pattern to increase difficulty.

6. Make your Game Accessible

Your players are real people, and each and every person is unique. If you want the largest player base to be able to play your mazes, you have to make sure your mazes are accessible for all people.

In the case of digital maze games, consider accessibility in the form of contrast, line width, and gameplay controls. Make sure your maze design considers colorblindness. Use distinct colors or additional cues for clarity.

Concept of how Mazy Maze game will implement accessibility controls for players.

7. Test and Iterate your Designs

Nothing is more frustrating that navigating through a maze for over 10 minutes, just to realize all possible paths lead to a dead end.

To prevent your players finding themselves in such situations, always test your mazes rigorously to identify potential bottlenecks or areas of confusion. If you draw your mazes on paper, make sure you are able to solve them first, before letting others navigate through it. You can track your path with a pencil while testing your maze on paper, to visually track how your paths go and whether your maze is solvable.

Also let close friends test your mazes. Iterate based on their feedback to refine your maze designs for a better user experience.

8. Offer Rewards for Progress

Your goal is to engage players with your mazes for as long as possible. No matter how good your maze designs are, though, at some point, every player gets bored. Who likes doing the same thing over and over, anyway?

What helps to increase engagement and keep your players playing your maze (and make them come back every now and then), is to implement rewards or checkpoints at significant stages of your mazes. This helps motivate your players and provides a sense of accomplishment as they advance.

Think of in-game trophies (in case you have a digital game) or promise them a diner or snack if they complete your maze on paper within a set time limit. Challenge your friends, and tell them that the one who completes the maze in the shortest amount of time will have a drink on you.

In Mazy Maze game, I will include in-game trophies and badges as rewards for my players.

9. Implement Responsive Design

If your digital game is played across various devices, optimize maze designs for different screen sizes to maintain consistency and ease of play.

The screen real estate on a phone can be used both in vertical mode as well as in landscape mode when playing a maze game. No matter what orientation mode your players play your maze game, ensure that maximum screen space is used to provide as much overview of the maze as possible (after all, a 2-dimensional maze has to be navigated visually).

On the other hand, you may reduce the visibility of the maze deliberately if you want to make the maze harder to navigate (so that your players have to scroll left, right, up and down for a complete overview of the maze), as long as you do implement responsive design in the overall app UI.

10. Provide Clear Instructions or a Tutorial

If you’ve ever seen a maze puzzle at the end of a newspaper, I bet you didn’t have trouble understanding how to play the game: navigate the maze from the start until the end. How hard can that be, right?

In a digital maze game, though, there are multiple ways to let your players navigate the maze. You can let them draw a line through the pathways with their finger, navigate a ball through the pathways with distinct (touch) buttons, or even let them tilt their phone to navigate a ball or other (digital) object through the maze.

No matter what type of navigation you implement, make sure your players know how to interact with your controls. Provide clear instructions or a small tutorial at the beginning to familiarize your players with navigation controls and any unique mechanics specific to your game.

These instructions and/or tutorial don’t need to be too complex, either. Sometimes, a few pictures are more than enough to show the player how to use the controls.

11. Vary Gameplay Elements

This is another aspect that is about increasing engagement of your players. Playing the same type of maze structures over and over will get boring at some point, so make sure to spice things up.

You can think of implementing a variety of elements such as switches, teleporters, or movable barriers to add depth and interest to your maze experience. There are also other types of mazes that you can include within your game, such as blind mazes, weaving mazes, arrow mazes, or, the most complex one, reactive mazes!

12. Ask for Player Feedback

Finally, keep adjusting your mazes and improve the gameplay experience by asking your players for feedback, preferably from within the game interface.

As you design your own mazes, you will know the correct paths to navigate your own mazes. Thus, your mazes may feel very intuitive and logical. However, to a stranger who hasn’t ever seen or navigated your game, the mazes can feel overwhelmingly complex.

Hence, always include some way for your players to provide you feedback. And if you aren’t getting feedback, actively ask your players! You can do so by showing a non-interuptive popup dialog after a few sessions that asks your players whether they like your mazes, or where they find difficulties.

This feedback can be invaluable for fine-tuning existing mazes or designing new ones.

Conclusion

Remember, while designing user-friendly mazes, the primary focus should be on providing an engaging and enjoyable experience for your players while progressively challenging their problem-solving skills.

The best way to dsign mazes suited for your players, is to test your mazes and ask players for feedback. Iterate, iterate, and keep on iterating on your maze designs. After each iteration, your design will be better and more enjoyable for your players.

How do you design your mazes and what problems do you stumble upon? Let me know in the comments down below!

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