I began thinking on my game concept in early October. During this time of year, my rural Pennsylvania hometown is just starting it’s yearly routine of corn-maze madness, pumpkin-flavored everything, and homemade haunted hay-rides. This gave me a great idea.. my game should be set in a Halloween-themed virtual maze!

With the setting in place, the purpose of the game came pretty naturally. I would build a first-person experience, navigable via the head-mounted display of my choice, and require the user to collect a set number of hidden collectible objects (pumpkins of course) within a set time frame (5-minutes in this case). If they fail to collect all pumpkins within the 5-minute time frame, they lose and the game would restart.

I would call the game… Maze Runner.

To concept the maze layout, I used Sketch (since I already use it for everything else).

I used the Unity game engine to design and develop the game. Unity has a great asset store with a wide selection of textures, 3-d models, etc. I took full advantage of these resources for setting the scene, and put my own design twist on them where I saw fit.

Google Cardboard was my head-mounted display of choice due to it’s robust API compatibility with Unity. It only took a few simple steps to push the build to my iPhone 6 through xCode, and plop it into my $10 Google Cardboard setup to start playing!

My first step in the design phase was mapping out the maze, and choosing where to place the hidden pumpkins. I had a few considerations to keep in mind:

1. The map should be simple enough to complete in 5-minutes even if the user gets lost.

2. The user must be able to move around the map while still keeping a sense of place (aka “way finding”).

To solve consideration 1, I kept the maze layout fairly simple. It would be rectangular, with 1 entry point. There would be 6 dead-ends. The collectible pumpkins were constrained to 5.

In order to solve consideration 2, I strategically placed the pumpkins in specific locations throughout the maze. Each pumpkin would also be identified by a unique color in the maze and within the game controls. That way, users could identify where they are in the maze by which color pumpkin they are at.

With all the logistics in place, I was finally ready to start building the maze in Unity. I really underestimated the breadth of work required here to build out such a complex scene. Each wall had to be manually maneuvered into place, while maintaining consistent spacing and axis settings.

It took FOREVER.

The final result was perfect and well worth the effort.

The next step was to import 3-d models for the pumpkins, apply textures to the maze, and design the skybox. Unity’s asset store came in super handy here, since I was working within a limited timeframe and didn’t have time to dabble with 3-d modeling… maybe next time!

I easily found the perfect pumpkin model, grass maze texture, and spooky skybox to create the desired haunted look & feel. I began dropping the 3-d pumpkins into their places, and applying individual color sources to differentiate.

To take advantage of the virtual space, I really wanted the final pumpkin to be this massive behemoth object that could be seen any time the user looked up.

Behemoth pumpkin would serve two purposes:

1. Act as a way-pointing element to guide the users through the maze.

2. Amplify the scare factor.. BOO!

The final step in the design phase was to craft a user interface for the game. It would need to include a countdown timer and collectible progress tracker (to track how many pumpkins you’ve collected) and be visible to the user at all times. All of this UI magic would have to be driven by “animators” with very specifically-defined dependent variables.

I decided to use 2-d pumpkin icons in the UI to represent each collectible 3-d pumpkin in the maze. The UI pumpkins start out in an opaque state, to indicate they have not been collected yet. Each one has a corresponding color (which is applied as a light source under each collectible 3-d pumpkin) and is ordered based off their location in the maze. Blue is first, followed by pink, and so on. This allows the element to double as a way finding attribute for the user in the chance that they get lost.

Once each pumpkin is “collected” in the maze, the 3-d pumpkin drops in opacity and it’s corresponding UI icon lights up to indicate it’s collected.

The game ends when one of two things happens –  the timer drops to 0:00, or all pumpkins have been collected – whichever comes first. If all pumpkins were collected, a “You Win! 😃” message pops up. Otherwise, “Sorry 😔 You Lose!”.

It was finally time to apply my simple-yet-effective C# skillset I had built up from prior Unity projects. This process took the longest of all. Countless hours were spent testing, debugging, testing, tutorial-watching, debugging, forum-surfing, and testing some more.

The end-result was comprised of four scripts; Autowalk, Countdown, Floater, and Gameover.

The Autowalk script drives the movement of the player. It’s function is simple: anytime the Google Cardboard button is tapped (a tiny piece that simulates a “screen tap” on the mobile device), it sets the user off in a steady motion. In order to stop moving, a second tap of the Cardboard button is required. The user can change direction at any time by turning their gaze left or right.. it’s all gyroscope based.

The Countdown script is pretty intuitive. It starts the game off at 5 minutes (or 300 seconds in this case), and subtracts a second for each second that passes since the game started.

Not entirely necessary, but a worthwhile boost to the spook-factor. The Floater script’s sole purpose is to move the 3-d collectible pumpkins up and down on the y-axis to give the the appearance of floating.

Here is a taste of what it looks like.

As stated before, the game ends when one of two things happens –  the timer drops to 0:00, or all pumpkins have been collected. The Gameover script makes all this magic happen by tying appropriate elements together at the appropriate time.

Win or lose, the game resets the user back to the start for another round of haunted fun!