Crafting: Die Labyrinthmaschine / The Labyrinth Machine

As I have mentioned earlier, this started out as my attempt to make a fully analog mechanical roguelike as well as a second machine for my cardboard arcade. I figure, I can make about one of these things per year – and this one was to be even more videogamey than the pinball I had made in 2018. I took the additional free time that a vacation of my family without me provided to craft this monstrosity:

Now, this probably doesn't tell you much yet. Let's get into the nitty-gritty details of making the Machine.

Forms of Game and the Roguelike

When I started MadZabGaming, I did so with the intend to go into the full spectrum of gaming. I still hold by that sentiment and can look back on a diverse portfolio of things I have created games-wise. People who know me personally know that I love me a good roguelike. I like to explore and when I create a roguelike, the procedural world-generation can surprise even me as its creator.

Free Release: Cup Quest

Made another Twine-Game that is large enough to be called a full release. Cup Quest takes place in a maze (that isn't randomly generated for a change – although the original map was made rolling dice). It's suitable for even the youngest players if they can read. I suggest you draw a map of the maze if you want to have any chance of beating the game.

Play Cup Quest in your browser.

Crafting: Cup Quest

When a colleague accidentally destroyed my mug at work, I was distraught: It had been a gift from my wife for my first ever father's day as a dad (which is, what it said on the mug: "DAD". I had defended it fiercely against other people in our office). I had get myself a replacement. I decided to design one myself, like I had done for my son: Get a blank steel mug and etch something into it using my power tool. While his cup got the logo of his then favorite TV show, I wanted to make something gamey for myself.

This is Cup Quest. It's a game you can play on your mug, using, as my son pointed out, just your finger. I even fitted the entirety of the rules onto the cup along with the maze. Now, it's just a maze with several different points you need to go to but my four-year-old likes it and it looks cool enough at the office. Also it's a little show-off in simplicity of game design: You could fit the rules into an original-length tweet three times over.

Now you're in luck, dear fives of readers: In order to keep my meager coding muscles from total atrophy, I decided to make a Twine version of Cup Quest. So you can play the game as well, from the comfort of your computer, perhaps with less graphics but with a lot more words instead. Stay tuned for a release extremely soon!

Crafting: Höhlenabenteuer/Cave Adventure

The basic idea behind this was making a kid-friendly version of We're Going On A Fucking Adventure. Not only did I want to cut out most of the violence, I also wanted to make the game much more simple so that I could play it with my son (who is four years old right now). We both do still like to explore caves and dungeons, so this game keeps the theme.

The game itself is basically a riddle and can be played by one player alone. Sometimes it's difficult to solve the cave, sometimes it's rather easy. And in very, very rare cases, it's actually impossible. Still, it's fun and children won't see the obvious solutions, instead just going for it and generating interesting situations that the four kid-protagonists have to get out of.

The four kids are basic kid-story-archetypes, each having one special ability and one weakness. It's often all about avoiding the monsters and perhaps setting up a multi-player-trap to catch them. The game is completely cooperative and I am quite pleased with it. I entered it into a game developers competition and am as of right now waiting for results. Wish me luck!

Crafting: A cardboard pinball machine

When we were on family vacation to Greece this year, the hotel had a little pinball machine that you could play to win rubber balls (and you couldn't lose. You'd eventually get your ball). I played it for my son as he wanted the ball and I wanted the play. It made me think of building my own pinball machine again. A quick search on the net told me that actual components are incredibly expensive. Then I found the large number of cardboard crafting videos on YouTube that had actually covered this topic.

I decided to make one myself. It took a while, in the end I even had to wait for a suitably large thing to be delivered to our house in order to finish the last big components. It took five or six sticks of hot glue but I think the result is quite nice:

The thing is big: 50 by 25 centimeters. And it works quite well: You can actually get the marble to run up the ramp and then come back down via the bridge. I'm quite fond of it and play it every once in a while. Make no mistake though: It took me roughly 40 hours of work to make this thing over the course of several weeks. If you don't enjoy the crafting process, there are alternatives out there.

Crafting: Der Dornengarten/The Thorn Garden

This game book has been in the making for a looong time. I had written most of the pages quite a while ago but this summer I went and did the drudgery of randomizing the page numbers and still keeping the page jumps intact. I have yet to give the book a true and serious look in order to make sure that there are not errors of style or numbering. Still I'm pround of what I made there:

The book is a non-linear fairy tale. It's basically a classic choose-your-own-adventure but it has a twist: On the inside of the cover, there are markings with letters and numbers that you can mark with paper clips. That way, the book essentially gets RAM:

This means, the book can remember things and have them be obscure to the player/reader at the same time. The thing is: The maze this story takes place in, is different every time you read it. In order to make that work, I needed to craft some tools before writing the actual text:

Every time you read this book, you will need to find a new way through the maze and will encounter other characters and have different conversations. And your decisions matter. At the same time, you can always retrace your steps and the whole thing stays consistent in its topography. I'm quite proud of that working and in theory one could take the structure and put other stories into it, now that the base work has been done. I'm planning on pitching this to a publisher some day.