The Crystal Maze (Patreon)

Ahhh the Crystal maze, a gameshow from eons past which saw a team of intrepid british 20-30 year olds go through a hurl of obstacles and puzzles in attempts to win crystals. Why? Why, for time of course. Time needed for the final Crystal Dome! Inside grabbing enough tickets to win the grand prize (whatever that was at the time, horse riding? Or something? It didn't really matter) 

So I don't want to ramble toooo much about this, but I have an extreme soft spot for tie-in games. So the idea of tie-in *game show* games to boot, is always a fun thing. Especially for really out there game shows, like home versions of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy or even Catchphrase which Crystal Maze beat in the vote, so much more straight forward. They're quite....grounded...for lack of a better word haha. So trying to replicate something as wacky as The Crystal Maze or American Gladiator results in more of a challenge design wise. 

In the original game teams are made up of 6 but had to bring that down to a more manageable 4. I *like* to believe actual devs would have done this because having 6 proverbial "lives" as it were would have made the game either too long, or too easy. I also implemented/make note of team members having unique stats which I think could have gone a way to making "runs" more unique/challenging. 

My logic was that certain stats would give you bonuses in similar challenges. If your member has more stamina, they'd get more time for physical challenges, wit would mean intelligence based puzzles might be easier/also have more time and speed means most challenges have an extra 10-30 seconds. Nothing mega hammered on down but I still like to think about mechanics more than just pure mockup/images :D. 

Quite happy with how this one turned out. It took a bit longer than I expected but I've been dabbling with GB Studio...which brings me onto the big news! You may notice a certain thing attached to this post, and hopefully every future demake post! A rom!

Download and try out in your emulator of choice or put it on a flashcart and see it on the real hardware! Pressing right/left will scroll through each image. The plan is to do galleries of each, and hopefully small gameplay demos in the future!

I aim to have each rom include little bonuses, animations, and of course it includes a credits with a list of every patron! :D