MAZE, an online co-op FPS Windows game

Players are sent from the moon on one of the mazes covering the earth, in a squad up to 4 players. After landing in the safe zone, they must secure it, before exploring the maze and find a weakness to defeat it.

A game session time ranges from 30 to 45 minutes.

The Maze

Each maze is procedurally generated. At the center of every maze is a safe zone, acting as a vegetation backup setup by the AI. Around it, approximately 8 times bigger, are the paths of the maze, filled with traps and patrolling enemies.

A maze can be defeated in various ways. These solutions range from action packed ones, to more subtle solutions, involving dexterity in platforming or (small) puzzle solving. Some of these "endings" for each game session are more difficult to reach than others, and allow experienced players to have a stronger challenge, while also allowing players to chose different experiences depending on their likings.

The Players

When exploring the maze, you have to use the best of your abilities to quickly evolve while avoiding traps and obstacles set along the way. Combine your wall jumps, slides, wall grabs, vaults, etc. to overcome any defense mechanism sent by the AI!

Crafting

Collecting metal ores scattered around the maze, or directly from the hull of the defeated enemy drones will allow you to craft suit enhancements, and modify your starting weapon to better match your playstyle.

Energy / Time Limit

Lunar rangers need energy to power their suits and weapons. This consuming energy is represented by a countdown timer, forcing the players to quickly react during their sessions and keep the game at a good pace. If a player gets knocked out by an enemy, energy may get stolen or strongly decreased.

When crafting, or doing an action in the maze (secure a part of the maze, heal a player...), this energy is also used.
Managing your energy to make sure you and your friends will have enough to finish the session is important.
Players can craft banks to stock their energy in a safe place, and exchange it with other players, to allow for a more fluid supervision.

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Introducing MAZE, a cooperative first-person shooter set in a gigantic maze

Feb 8 2017 News 2 comments

Introducing MAZE, a cooperative first-person shooter set in a gigantic maze.

In MAZE you and your friends embody rangers coming from the moon to enfree the Earth, transformed by a super-intelligent AI into a giant maze.

Here’s a video:

Gameplay

As lunar ranger, you have a limited amount of time on Earth as your suit needs to be powered to breath & move. Your goal is to find the control terminal of the section of the maze you’ve been dropped in, and deactivate it.

To do so, you must explore the gigantic procedurally generated maze with your squad, craft some components to progress and resist against the drones and defense mechanisms of the maze.

We are building the game as a cooperative shooter, even if it can borrow some elements from survival games, MAZE is not one of them. It still is about exploring, interacting with your friends and the environment, and shooting at enemies.

Yes, The Maze Runner (and Time Out) are inspirations for the game.

Team

We are a team of 10, working on MAZE: 3 Developers/Designers, 5 Artists, 1 Sound Designer/Musician & 1 Producer/Slave.

The game is built using the Unreal Engine 4.

We’ve waited to talk about the game because we wanted to ensure that we had the skill, time and talent to make this game. You can expect us to freely talk about MAZE from now on. In the next weeks, we’re going to present you multiple points of the game and show you what we’ve achieved so far.

We’re a small team of passionate game developers, we really want to ship the best game we possibly can. The little video you saw is a work-in-progress of the game, and we are really looking to improve it!

What about your other game REPULSE: Galactic Rivals?

REPULSE: Galactic Rivals’ team and MAZE’s team only share a small percentage of member. This means production time spent on one game won’t affect the other, everything’s fine!

What’s next?

We’re going to keep you updated on the progression we make on the game. We’re looking to release MAZE on Steam Early Access (after going through Greenlight) in the next few months. No official date yet. Somewhere between this summer and next winter. Our goal is to ship a fun, (kind of) optimized product. We’re then going to improve it with you guys and add content based on your feedbacks.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even on survivethemaze.com!