You can now play Maze Defender on Scared Square Games. Maze Defender was one of the first games we made and saw the introduction of the Scared Square. The following is a post from the original announcement of the game:
Maze Defender is a small game which was designed and developed by Stuart Lilford. You control the turret in the center and you have to shoot the aliens as they enter the spiral maze and stop them before they reach your base.
The idea came to me while I was in Lanzarote. I had a penchant for ‘Tower Defense’ games at the time and I had to come up with a small browser-based game to make in Macromedia Director 2004 for University. During lectures, we began learning lingo script by creating a crude version of the classic Space Invaders, this led me to thinking about different ways you could alter Space Invaders basic game mechanics to create an original experience.
With Maze Defender the turret, that would be at the bottom of the screen in Space Invaders, is in the center and the aliens are still aliens, but instead of coming down, they go in a spiral. So really there are only two differences in core gameplay between Space Invaders and Maze Defender.
I decided to jazz up the gameplay a little by adding a power up. Once in a while a power up will come through the maze with the aliens. The aim is to NOT shoot this and let this reach your base in the center. The effect? temporarily slowing the aliens down so that you can shoot them easier. I think in the end I finished it with 15 levels, with four different aliens to shoot.
What would I do differently? Well, if I am honest, the game gets a bit TOO difficult towards the end. You know something’s not right when you’ve designed created and tested a game and even YOU can’t complete it. Still, I received an an A grade for the finished product, but why not try it yourself?
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