Ideas for a maze game for Hark The Sound

I’m thinking you move around with the arrow keys. You start at a random place in the maze and find your way to an end point with maybe be a treasure you collect. Optionally you have to find your way back from the end to the beginning. Mazes can be automatically generated in any size from 2×2 to 100×100. You hear a sound like “oomph” if you run into a wall.

• How about allowing the players to leave marks behind so they can remember where they have been?
• Or how about clues in the maze?
  • Braille letters? The game might start by telling you the word to look for. Then as you go along you find letters. It might say There is a Braille letter here with dots 1 and 4. If you go the wrong way either there are no letters or maybe they don’t spell a word.
  • Music? Perhaps playing quietly at different intersections so that you have some basis for memory.
  • Environmental sounds? Perhaps the maze starts with a clue like Go past the lunchroom and then past the gym to discover the treasure.
  • A puzzle to solve?
• Can you probe in a direction before moving? Or does it announce the directions you can go? There are openings to the East and South.
• Can we use spatial sound to indicate the direction to go? We can only rely on stereo on most computers.
• Should each maze be randomly generated? Or should it be based (for example) on a seed the teacher provides so a child can play the same mazes multiple times? Either is doable.
• Should players have to go back to the entrance after finding the end? Perhaps they are picking up treasures to get points. Maybe you enter the maze, find the treasure and then have to get back out?
• Time limits? Or something coming up behind you? This would add excitement. Maybe after you get the treasure you hear something chasing you out of the maze? This could be a configurable option.
• Points for solving the maze quickly? Negative points for running in to walls?
• Should mazes become gradually more challenging?
• It would be neat to make the mazes like our other games so that teachers can modify the content of the clues and aspects of game play to suit their students.