Experiments with lights and shadows in a dark maze

Hi there, how are doing?

I'm still excited with the results obtained with PEAS! Animated Sudoku... it's very cool, honestly. :)

In other hand, I have joined to 1 Bit Jam mainly because I tought would face a lot of retro games and would be another opportunity to challenge myself. Sadly I could't dedicate a lot as I did on the last one and decided to simplify the things creating something simplier.

The initial version

For this jam my idea was create a top-down dark maze.
I would like to create an adventure, but no time for that as started the work less than 1 day to submissions deadline.

I got happy to achieve the first version. It looked like that:

The goal is find the treasure with the lightspot that refects the ahead wall.

• Game over if hit the wall.
• Game won if yout touch the hidden treasure.

Simple, no?

Shadows

I loved the first version, it was playable, a bit fun. I did it on short time. I was happy with that.

But, after some feedbacks I noticed It was really too primitive.

No problem! I decided to experiment changing the lightspot bringing a shadow effect:

The result was interesting:

• Easier too undertand the block of walls.
• It got live with the shadow movement.
• I could use the central focus to reveal something found.

Things to improve:

• Distance between the player and the light. If the light is far,  would hide close walls. If close would turn harder to understand the map.
• I noticed that light was crossing the walls, what was so strange. 
• If the player is too close the wall, it didn't see the wall as there is a distance between the both.

The adventure way

I decided the follow the adventure way and changed some things:

• I added a collectable key.
• I added dialogs to interact to the player.
• The treasure is hidden and even finding it the player need to find the key to unlock it.

At this moment I tought: "Hey, now it looks like and adventure, it's getting live!"

Next steps

Now I am trying to improve the light issues:

• It must not cross the walls.
• It must to have shadow on.
• It must to have fixed length and not reflect the opposite wall if it's too far.
• It must to have a focus enought to highlight a found item like a key.

That's all.

And you, what are your impressions?