Hey Hive
As a developer, I really like challenges.
I’ve always loved when a client comes up with a new idea I’ve never tried before or when I see something on social media that grabs my attention and inspires something new.
Although I tend to focus more on game development, it has led me to explore many different areas of programming: frontend, backend, game dev, and different languages, as well as creating games in various environments like Unity, Discord, and HTML5.
That’s why I currently love working with one of my freelance clients, for whom I develop games for brand events and activations. Because they are always looking to innovate with cool ideas.
In this post, I wanted to share with you a project I made last month with them.
The idea was a 2D maze game for Android in which players had to complete the maze with their finger within a set time.
It sounds simple at first, but developing what seemed like a straightforward mechanic turned out to be more challenging than expected. Mainly because they wanted to use a flat image of a maze.
Something like this:
My first thought was to add colliders to every single wall of the maze, but that would have been tedious.
And if the maze changed for any reason, I’d have to adjust all those colliders again.
I did some research, but I couldn’t find the right tutorial. Most examples used simple mazes made from 2D rectangle colliders where you move a player object. Not what I needed.
So… I finally asked ChatGPT.
Not gonna lie. As a programmer, ChatGPT has become an everyday tool for me. It speeds up my development and is a great research companion in cases like this.
(TIP: Use it to learn, not to depend 100% of it. I always make sure to understand the proposed solution instead of copy-pasting blindly.)
It suggested a great approach:
The maze walls are all one color.
The background is either transparent or white.
While the player moves their finger, I read the pixel color data at that position.
If the color changes abruptly, it means the player hit a wall.
And it worked perfectly!
I also used Unity’s Line Renderer to draw the player’s path so it seems your are using a pencil.
Here is a quick gameplay!
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. I also had to:
Detect if the player starts exactly at the start position (and not anywhere else).
Detect when they reach the finish.
Add checkpoints, because the game was designed for kids—and restarting from scratch after every small mistake would be frustrating.
Thankfully, I solved all of these using the same logic:
I placed invisible empty GameObjects that Unity detects when touched, marking the start, finish, and checkpoints.
This wasn’t an easy development, but I’m really proud of the result and learned a lot from the process.
That’s all for today!
Thanks for reading!
wow congrats on a client job. how did you get the job? was the client someone you knew? did they want to release this app for mobile? what are thier plans for it? my dad used to draw mazes for me as a kid and i would draw a line like that to get through them. is that how the game works? you create a line? or do you move that red ball? its cool how it makes a drawing, but what if you want to backtrack in the maze, does that get confusing looking? thanks for sharing you!
thanks! They contact me via Linkedin a year ago and we are working together since then. They make games for brand activations and events and we are always looking for innovation.
What about you, do you work full time on skatehive?
Cool! My dad use to take me to restaurants where the placemats where mazes or drawings to color
No, the red ball pick is a reference of the kind of games i found on youtube but that didn't work for me because i needed the pencil line i finally made.
If you want to backtrack you have two options: 1- Lift the finger and start from the checkpoint or you can try the backtraking going backwards
wow thats cool you get dev jobs on linked in. is it too much to ask, how much they they pay you to develop this? i have NEVER done any game dev for a client so i wonder how that would feel...
I can’t share the exact figure,😁 The price depends a lot of the type of game(2d,3d, AR/VR, etc) and the mechanics it will have. I estimate the hours it would take and sent the price taking that into account
skatehive is full time but so is Gnar world. all the creative stuff i do is full time. thats the life of an artist, even if i dont get paid to do it.
Its awesome that you can make a living of doing the things you love!
i dont yet make a living off it, which is why i was asking you what your process is for doing so. maybe someday though. i have in the past when i used to make paintings full time... but this computer stuff is kinda new to me
Oh, I didn't do much to be honest, I created my linked in profile a while ago and fill description, photo, etc.
And then some offers start to appear. For me is kind of a mistery too because on the past years I received offers one every two months or so but after this clients offer I didn't receive anymore so I don't know is the market is saturated or what
My only advice would be to create a linked in and start posting all your projects there and see if people reach out to you.
Linked in is not the only platform tho, I have a friend that post his models on Instagram and he received offers there
Hope this helps! If you have any doubt let me know
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