Maybe a little lost in translation... by series I don't mean a series of maze games, trust me I've had enough of mazes myself for a while now...but a series of first person adventure games. A game about mazes was just an easy starting point. I'm trying to reimagine some of the games I tried to make 20 years ago in QBasic, Mr. Maze being one of them, as I prefer to try not to abandon projects but put them on hold until the time is right, and this was the right time for Mr. Maze!
The underlying thought, beside some research into walking sims and what people don't like about them (number 1 comment being ones where you're simply watching a playback of someone elses adventure and not really a part of one for yourself) was, when I was young, why did I like games like Granny's Garden? They weren't graphic masterpieces, but they
were ultimately adventures, and they shaped a lot of adventurers interest in the genre. So Mr. Maze was made with the idea that, if I was 5 again and came across this game, I might enjoy it lol.
There are no manual saves sorry, but reaching the checkpoints is not difficult, except on one level, but that's the hardest level in the game, and mostly just for that reason. I do appreciate people's desire for manual saves, unfortunately, the save game assets I've tried in Unity have either broken the game or ruined the code, so I'm sticking with simpler checkpoint methods for now so that I know the save system in effect inside out (rather than relying on someone elses code, and Unity does not have a built in save function like AGS, but on the flip side, when you update a Unity game it doesn't break all the save games, like AGS does, or rather
did, in my case).
I'm pretty confident players will push forward to reach the story beats and won't find themselves worrying too much about the save points, and the videos seem to be proving that point for the most part. As you'll see in the video the gameplay isn't so difficult. But it's true, this game isn't really designed for point and click fans, moreso just casual adventurers! Likening this game to maze puzzles in point n clicks you don't like well hmm...I wouldn't put them in the same basket myself, as the two experiences are hard to compare, but sure, if you outright hate mazes, well this is a game about mazes so yeah, no-one will blame you for steering clear
99% of maze games on Steam are top down ones like you might recall from Fate of Atlantis etc...I just wanted to turn that on its head and try something a little more immersive and jovial. Whatever's next won't be maze focussed, so if nothing else, just keep in mind the story element and exploration, that's where the real focus is (for the future, at least).