Game Play
Goal: Get to the exit (the “F”).
Keys:
- ↑/↓/←/→: Movement
- Space: Activate lifts
Rules:
- You can only move up or down one level. You’re blocked for moving up more than one level and you will fall to you death if you try to drop down more than one level.
About
Back around the turn of the century, magic eye images were all the rage. I have a Magic Eye book when I was a teenager, but instead of simple scenes, this one actually featured puzzles. The stereogram image was some of 3D object and you had to induce the effect, and then answer a particular question. Some of them were quite cleaver. There was one where you had to determine whether something was a “knot or not” by untangling it with your mind. There was another where you had to determine which of four objects was a mirror of the another one and therefore being the odd one one. And there was a three double-page maze that you had to traverse.
One puzzle was the inspiration for this game. It was a grid with each cell being a different level, and the goal was to move from the starting cell through to the end. The rule was that you could only move to a cell that was a different height than the one you were one. You could only move to a higher level in an orthogonal direction, and move to a lower one in a diagonal direction (or it might’ve been the other way around). You .
The concept seem intriguing to me so I thought about coming up with my own puzzles with this rule set. I made them all within Microsoft Word, using the 3D drawing effects that were available, and printed them out to paste them into an exercise book. Over time added additional elements like lifts, water, and lava, and eventually dropped the complex movement rules to one where you could only in an orthogonal direction, and can move to a cell at the same level or one high or lower than the level you were on.
I eventually realised that with a bit of cleaver tile placement I could actually make this into a game. So that’s what I did.