Lens Do This

Find Your Way Through A Maze Where All Is Not As It Seems

My entry for Global Game Jam 2026, Lens Do This! plays with the concept of masks by applying them in a technical sense - objects may be hidden or altered and you reveal them with a special lens that follows you as you navigate the maze.

Controls

Use wasd or the arrow keys to move your marble through the maze and reach a goal tile (the green flag). If you feel you're really stuck, hit <space> to reset the level.

Thoughts

This is my first attempt at a puzzle game! The tech to have objects appear or not within the mask was an  interesting challenge and I'm quite happy with how it came out. 

But! I'm not sure I'm great at making puzzles. Or rather, I'm certainly not able to put together a cohesive collection in the time frame of a jam. While I have typically jammed alone, I would have greatly benefitted from a team designer as I did not have enough time to invent the puzzle mechanics and make interesting puzzles.

Which is too bad, because I made it easy to add content quickly! Levels are simply text files which are read at runtime, where each letter is a kind of tile. For example, here is the text for the first level. Neat, right?

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
W     W    h    h
W P   W    h  h h
W     W  h    h   
W     W h hhhhhhh
W               h
WWWWW   h       h
W   W      h    h
W w W   h  h    h T
W          h   wh
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Improvements

Gosh I'd like more levels. I'd also like to see hidden hazards that can kill the marble, and markings in the maze the player could use to remember a path - so that, say, they could navigate using a fire-revealing powerup, but get a different powerup they need elsewhere, and have to remember the safe path out of that section.

I also quite liked the feeling of having the lens tied to the mouse. I have this set up in the menu just for funsies. I think there's a whole different game there!

Credits

The game was completely done by me. I use Copilot when coding for speed where it makes sense. 

Audio courtesy of SONNISS. Great assets for a jam!