The Maze Towers - An "escape the dungeon" style game - Looking for feedback

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#1

The basic premise is similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - you spawn into the bottom of a tower and are trying to escape. But instead of being a turn based system like in PMD, it’s more fast paced, run around, try to escape. There’s power-ups, lots of enemies, and a variety of characters to earn.

It’s about a year into development and I’m looking to release it within the next few months. Before I do that, though, I’d like to get some feedback on what’s good / what’s bad / what changes I should make. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

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#4

Epic lobby! It is very creative and I enjoyed the short time spent on exploring it.

Maze Map
I like the maze map, but the collision box for the walls (negated cylinders?) restrict the movement of a player running down the side paths of the maze.

Character Statistics.
I think you should include a brief description somewhere for the purpose of each of these statistics (LUCK, HGHT, VSN SPD). I don’t know what VSN means, and I believe you should include the benefits of each of those statistics.

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It would be cool to see characters have zero luck, making luck more rare, giving players a feel of accomplishment for when they purchase a character with high luck statistics. By doing this, you could create a Saint Patrick’s Day themed outfit, which has a lot of luck.

User Interface.
I think there’s space room for UI improvements, though I do like that it’s possible to scale the UI to fit accordingly to my screen.

Coins.
I wasn’t aware that coins actually drop from the corpse of enemies. It might have been included in the tips that pass by on the bottom of the screen, but since my character moved so fast and I was teleported into the maze so fast, my eyes were focused on where I was heading.

Tips/Tutorial.
The tips didn’t stop showing after I had already completed a round, and they never came back after that. Not sure if intentional, but looking back at it now, they are important.

I would recommend a short tutorial or a help bar somewhere on the screen for players to refer to whenever they want.

Enemies.
I found it difficult to kill enemies, seeing how clicking on them is the only way to do that. This is because they use ranged magical attacks and run fast everywhere. I don’t see the point of going out of my way to running back to the enemies instead of finding the exit to the maze and killing them for only a few coins.

#5

That’s interesting - I actually never noticed that. I’ll look into what I can do about it, thanks!

Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll probably add the help bar like you mentioned and include the purpose for each of those in there. It’d probably be useful to have it somewhere on the page itself as well so I’ll have to think of how to do that.

I actually have a bit of that - the cat character has something like 20% luck whereas the leprechaun has something like 80%, so there is a bit of a gap to it. I’m not sure it’d be worth going straight down to zero though - basically all it affects rn is the power-ups, so having zero would mean there’s just no point in collecting power-ups. I’ll have to think about that one.

I think making a tutorial for that is a good idea. I’m just not entirely sure how best to go about it, so I’d have to look into that. But it’ll definitely be a good addition for it

I think I’m gonna do both - I’m not entirely sure on how to do the tutorial but it’s something I’ll look into. Then the help bar will be useful for things like the acronyms in the UI and what each stat corresponds to.

That might actually be a bug you found - they’re supposed to chase after you when they see you, rather than having to chase after them. I have the logic set up that they won’t detect you if you’re behind them but I may want to change that depending on how I end up dealing with the gameplay. I’ll see

Thanks for the feedback! Lots of good points in there that I’ll look into.

#6

Yes, the lobby is really nice. The actual game felt like a bit of a let down after that. Maybe a more dramatic entry to the game would help (something on par with the lobby). Also, a maze is not unlike an obby in some respects. You might look to borrow some ideas from those kinds of games to add interest to all the running (some things to jump over at least). I’d like to be able to shoot balls at the enemies and would be more inclined to engage them if I could. Do the maps change each time you enter?

There are some really nice parts to this. Will be fun to watch it evolve.
:+1:

#7

You might’ve faced a bug actually - there was one a few weeks ago that broke the firing a few days ago, thought I fixed it but may have missed something. You’re supposed to be able to attack enemies.

For the maps thing - they don’t yet, but I’m gonna hire some builders to build new maps for me. So it’s going to be a feature, just isn’t ready yet.

I’m not sure for the jumping over things but it’s an interesting idea. I’ll look into it. Thanks!

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#8

Okay, the ball doesn’t shoot out very far from the player and sometimes doesn’t appear, but I see it now.

It can be tricky to dial in the level of difficulty for a maze. Following the wall to the right or left can make a lot of mazes trivial. If you design a maze to counter that strategy, then it can quickly become too hard to be fun. The idea of jumping over things was just a way of suggesting that you add more interest (things to do) to the levels. Having something to do beyond racing to the next level and shooting enemies would make this game quite fun, IMO. If your level builders can design things so that it’s still fun when you are lost on a level, then you may be on to something here. Are you able to shoot at other players too? What happens if your health runs out?

Lots o luck with your upcoming release. :four_leaf_clover:

#9

Yeah, having something more to the maze would be cool. I’ll think about that as to what all I can do for it; if I have something similar to the kind of maze (maybe a hidden path thing that takes you to a minigame?) then that’d be a lot more fun, imo.

For other players, they’re similar to the enemy characters - just with more health. So you try to shoot at them, they’ll shoot at you, they’ll drop coins when they die. A big part of the character system was hiding who you are - so at a glance you’d think they’re another enemy player and attack each other.

When your health runs out you die & lose the coins you grabbed, but you have the opportunity to join back into it when you want. So it still has the goal of reaching the top, but there’s more to it.

That’s interesting regarding the issue you’re having with the ball. I noticed that they can sometimes shoot from behind depending on … unknown factors, so that may be the issue. It should, in theory, be shooting from in front … Like a superball.

Last thing I’ll mention is basically - I’m going more for a really small maze, but a bunch of them feel. Similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. So you don’t feel lost (as you can go over the entire thing in about a minute), but it still takes a while because of how many floors there are. I might change some of that… But that’s the hope. So I’m hoping that that adds up to less of that lost feeling. Not sure it’ll work but it seems to go well for PMD

Anyway - thanks for the tips and stuff! I appreciate it!

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#10

No worries! Good luck with the improvements of The Maze Towers.

If you’re open to another suggestion, I might recommend the coins drop as a big floating coin inside a transparent sphere part, which has the coin rotating 360 degrees until it gets picked up, or despawns/removed from Workspace/map after a 10+ seconds(?)

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#11

New maps? I’ve taken quite a liking to your game, and if you do not yet have anyone in mind to take care of that, be sure to hit me up! A PM on this platform, asking for my Discord handle works with me.

This sounds good and fine with me. What you stated above is pretty much how everything played out for me in the current (temporary?) map.

If you consider adding some parkour into the map, how about I suggest some parts/things in the maze that set you back if you run into them? (Kill, player freeze, player burn-overtime damage, teleportation to a random destination in the maze.

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#12

I played on mobile. like others - I really like the lobby, however there are a few things that made it feel a little dated. I feel there is too much use of materials, especially the grass - while it does work well in some cases I think having grass textured furniture is a little much, especially when it is right next to the already grass textured floor. The slide and the umbrella can definitely be changed to smooth plastic. Overall the game felt a little dark, maybe increase saturation and brightness? At the moment it does not feel like you are making the best use of the voxel system. Now this is purely from a mobile experience - in my opinion the player takes too much damage, I’m sure some of this can be easily avoided while playing on pc, but with the fiddle mobile controls I found myself unable to get past the first couple of levels.

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#13

Nice game! I think it has a very cool and unique style and it plays fairly well. The one thing I initially saw was that the lobby is very well done but it has a very different style from the game itself. It doesn’t seem to fit the game well. So what I would suggest is a new lobby (maybe using some of the assets from before, like the statue in the middle) to make a lobby that would fit the rustic/ mysterious style the game has. Otherwise, it’s a great game and I think it could do very well!
Nice job!

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#14

Overall, it’s a nifty concept that I’d love to see explored even further. It’s something that would definitely be original to Roblox, and you can tell there was a lot of hard work involved into the game. Nice work!

Here is my list of comments / ideas:

  • Are the mazes procedural? They already appear to be, which is great, but if not, then for sure make them generate randomly to keep the game spiced up.
  • Add trails! Given it’s a fast-paced game, trails will for sure be a great addition aside from characters. Characters aren’t enough on their own. It’s always good to have at least two types of products players can buy.
  • Add a Level Marker that appears over the screen when you reach the next floor. A medium-sized label that tweens to the center of the screen stating “Floor 2 / 3” or “Final Floor”.
  • Clarify the character stats to give players a better understanding on how their character will impact their play. For instance, I’m unsure what VSN means and I’d love to know how luck plays into the game (power ups?).
  • Make the mazes larger. Not longer or more difficult, but just larger in space to give more room for the players to dash. Also I suggest making the goo more shallow.
  • It’s weird that the default enemies were the default character skin. Maybe make them like goo monsters that spits goo balls? I’m not sure if the intention is to have players blend in with the enemies, but It’s hard to blend in considering that the enemies are isolated, and aren’t desperately dashing around like players (or at least I) do.
  • Make the power ups larger. Maybe about double their size.

Good luck!

#15

Good idea. I might take a similar idea but have it as a bubble above their head that pops after a few seconds, which’d drop the coins - but I’ll see once it’s actually implemented how that looks.

Sounds great! I was actually planning to look for someone once I’m happy with the scripting side of things, but if you’re willing to do it that saves me the trouble :slightly_smiling_face:
I’ll probably send you a message this weekend about how it works & everything. Thanks!

There’s a bit of that right now, albeit just through the power-ups (so it’s very minor) - but I have things like trap doors and jail cells that’ll randomly spawn at times. I was also thinking about having some scenery details (for example, in the sewer, maybe a sewer rat or a few boxes) so something like that would definitely be a good addition.

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#16

For the lobby, I agree - there’s some really good parts to it but I don’t really feel it fits my game much & there are definitely parts in there that I don’t like as much. So I’m going to see what I can do with that - I have a few friends that are builders and stuff so I’m hoping to be able to get another one made.

For the lighting / voxels - I’m actually clueless when it comes to that kind of stuff so I haven’t done much of anything on that side of things. I’ll probably look around once my game is ready for someone to give me some tips as to how to actually go about those things, but thanks for bringing that up so I know what to look for. I never would’ve noticed that.

And then for the mobile experience - I totally agree. The attack system was made originally on my PC without much consideration for mobile and it doesn’t really work on mobile devices. Once I get some other stuff taken care of, I’m gonna experiment with that to see what I can do to improve it so that it’s fair on both devices.

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#17

Thanks so much! I agree; the lobby is mainly a placeholder for now until I can get a custom one built. I’m just completely clueless when it comes to building so I went with the best one I could find lol

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#18

Thanks! It’s something I’ve actually spent a few years around the idea now and finally found something I liked about a year ago. Before that I’d always wanted a maze generator / dungeon / this kind of concept but just never really found a way that it was fun. I think the way I did this one changes that & I’m personally really happy with it.

As for the comments / ideas:

  • Yep! I have a generator I made which’ll make everything completely random.
  • Oh, good idea! I could hook that up into the battle system so you could have a trail of fire, for example, and then wherever you step would be lava for a few seconds - and if another player steps in it, they’ll take damage. That could be an interesting concept.
  • There’s actually one in there already but it’s really small - whenever you reach the next floor, it’ll show something like “Floor 2” in the bottom right corner for a few seconds. I’m not sure about whether I want the “/ 3” part, though, because without it you’re always guessing - and I think that adds a nice element to the game (never really knowing how much further you have to go)
  • Yeah, agreed. I’m probably going to do something like a help guide for that - just a quick lookup to explain the acronyms and what they all mean.
  • I was toying with that early on but never really found a good amount for it. I’m gonna keep playing with it, though, until I find something I like
  • Yeah, the default character skin is in the hopes that they’ll blend in. It doesn’t work perfectly, but I find it’s enough to kind of entice players into attacking each other. I’m worried that otherwise they’ll kind of team up & I’d rather avoid that in the name of all out chaos!
  • Alright, I can do that.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

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#19

Awesome :slightly_smiling_face: No rush, I’ll keep an eye out for that message, but for now, good luck with scripting!

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#20

It’s very good! Lobby is nice, and the objective definitely isn’t bad, and is on a unique side compared to other games on roblox.

I feel like the UI could use some improvements, leading it to fit to the game more. Also maybe increase the range in which how far the ball you eject goes. Whenever I hit an enemy that could be around 5-10 studs away from me, it doesn’t seem to make any contact.

Maybe add definitions to the stats in which each character has. I don’t have a clear understanding of what the acronym VSN means.

But besides these points, this game really does have potential for how original it is. :smile:

#21

The lobby is a free model from the toolbox