Mouse Trapped – Joe Anderson, 17 & Michael Bell, 17
“A nameless mouse is trapped in a series of difficult and deadly mazes by a negligent (but not actively malicious) scientist.”
The player controls the mouse as they navigate through each maze, which are mostly composed of immovable barriers and buttons that open and close obscured doors.
The aim of every level is to get the mouse to the cheese, which will typically be behind a closed door. Through clever manipulation of game elements, the mouse will open the path to the cheese and get their reward.
Developing this game has been by no means easy for my partner and myself. Michael is an excellent artist and story writer, but he has little experience working on a computer. He had to learn a whole new aspect of drawing in order to produce assets for the game.
As well as learning how to use an image editing program (paint.net), Michael got a chance to practice his knowledge of keyboard shortcuts to improve the efficiency and quality of his work.
For me, this is the first time I have had to maintain a live website. I gained experience in hosting Rails apps on Heroku, using Google Analytics to track usage data and thinking about search engine optimisation, all of which will be invaluable to me in the web design industry.
