Community Project: The Maze Gallery

[Ally (Allyson Gray)]

Working on this project has been a real joy so far!
The theme and guidelines strike a great balance between structure and creative freedom.

I’ve never really done co-writing before and I think this was the perfect environment to give it a try. I found so much inspiration and opportunity when working with fellow authors, which elevated my own writing!

[rubik]

Journey to the heart of the Maze Gallery continues! Let’s see how we’re getting on now that the dust has settled from the First Draft deadline:

• A whopping 45 entries that were accepted
• From 20 authors and 4 more co-authors
• Pre-compilation there were 44,607 words

Whew! That’s a lot to go through, I’m glad to have enlisted 4 editors (a few of whom also authored submissions) to help me provide adequate feedback. There were also a number of submissions which weren’t accepted, and those authors have been given the opportunity to (quickly) revise and re-submit to be integrated into the final game if their schedule/energy allows.

This meant a big shake-up from the original layout, but a much more understandable structure (minor spoilers if you intend to play it blind):

Those grey entries are still awaiting integration feedback, and the red ones are the not-yet-acceptable ones which may be cut if they can’t be revised in time.

The real hurdle is well underway: putting it all together.

Thus far I’ve been focused on getting a smaller demo suitable for having first-impression testers explore the world. This has done a good job of helping us prioritize what types of UI elements we will need and which assets Artists & Audio contributors will have the best impact with. The demo is roughly 1/3rd of the size of the submissions (again, minor spoilers):

We will not be sharing this demo publicly yet, but if you would like to join to test or edit then I would be happy to add you to the discord server where we are coordinating this effort. The full game will be released on September 1st.

In order to submit for consideration to show the Maze Gallery at the Seattle Indies Expo I created my first ever video trailer for a piece of interactive fiction. I’d love to hear your opinion on it: Maze Gallery Teaser Trailer

[rubik]

We’re prepping the IFcomp build now! It’s been a hectic time and I haven’t been able to update this thread as often as I’d have liked. Once the dust settles expect a series of write-ups on some of the many lessons we’ve received and how we plan to do better.

Easy answer: make more time for documentation during production. Example: exactly this, here.

[rubik]

What a whirlwind! I was touched to see how many people played & enjoyed the Maze Gallery. And 20th place in IFComp! By far the highest I’ve ever placed, and I owe it all to the amazing contributors that collaborated with me.

Right now we’re hip-deep in updating the Maze Gallery for a release on Steam and a large quality-of-life patch on itch. We aren’t planning to charge money for the Steam release, it will mostly be an experience of working through the pipeline to reach a broader audience and get comfortable/knowledgeable about what goes into putting interactive fiction on a major gaming platform.

I’ve got a few ideas for topics to postmortem for this project, and I’d love to hear if y’all have any preferences on what I should write up first:

• Just the numbers (statistics & analytics)
• Successful vibes collaboration
• Challenges of large-scale integration
• The music behind the maze

Also we’re adding a bunch of art & UI features that got cut for scope (and I figure purist IF players weren’t going to miss them anyways) but here’s a sneak peek: