My Unreleased* Labyrinth 2 Levels

I have recently become hyper-aware of a pretty bad habit of mine in video games, and that is abandoning projects and never finishing or even releasing them. This happens to me a lot in pretty much any game that has stage builder elements, such as Geometry Dash or Super Mario Maker 2, and one of my favourite mobile games, Labyrinth 2, is no exception.

For context, since it's pretty old now, Labyrinth 2 is a game made by Illusion Labs in 2009, around the time Apple's App Store originally launched. In it you control a marble across a maze, and although the game contains standard walls and holes, it also features a massive variety of other items that make things much more fun!

The game also features a level builder that allows anybody to create levels using all of the possible elements, and I have messed around with that editor for over a decade now, making my first levels on my iPad in 2014.

Now, in 2020 I started making a few levels on my phone as well, however I got hit hard with my bad habit of not finishing/releasing things, and so I had only released three level packs despite having technically made about fifteen at the time.

That was until just over a week ago, when I got struck by motivation to finally finish and release some of these stages once and for all.

I might talk about some more of them soon, however I wanna specifically highlight one that I released today, which I call my [AltaKarl's] Lost Levels.

Levels from stray levelpacks that I never finished and don't have enough levels in to upload themselves (since packs need to have at least five levels to publish), so I put them all in a general collection where they can be released to the public!

The ID for the levelpack is EWXZPJ4B.18

The pack contains eight levels in total, and the first four are shown above.

The first two levels are ones that I actually found in my old account on my iPhone 8 from 2019, which I looked at for fun last week (and might write about soon). The pack they were from was called "Cool Levels" and was supposed to be phone versions of the last level pack I made for iPads, which was called "Cool Levels 4 You". These aren't that good, but I find them pretty fun in a nostalgic sort of way.

The third level is from the third levelpack I made on my current phone, the oldest to not be released, called "Diagonal", with this being the only level in it. It's a fairly simple level which is mostly made from walls at 45º angles, and has some moving platforms that I find very fun to traverse.

The fourth level is from the next levelpack, "Keyhole", and similar to the last one, this was the only level made for it. The idea for this one was that there are cannons that shoot through corridors, but there were small divots you could hide in to evade the cannonballs. This one's actually a pretty nice level, and has a mechanic that I feel like could be explored more!

Now, the final four levels of the pack are all from the same unfinished level pack called "Buttony". The idea for this pack was that the first level would have one button, the second level would have two buttons, the third level would have three buttons, and so on. I planned on continuing the pack, but I haven't gotten any good ideas, so I am leaving them here.

The 1-button level is mostly just a standard labyrinth except it has a closed door leading to the goal at the start, and a merry-go-round, and once you hit the button at the end the door opens and the merry-go-round changes directions, pretty simple.

The 2-button level is probably my favourite of the entire pack, as it has a simple yet interesting mechanic that I think I executed very well. You first press the blue button, which opens the exit door and a path to the green button, the green button opens the door to the area where the exit is but closes the exit door itself, so you have to go through another path and press the blue button again which opens the exit door back, and there you can finish the level!

It might sound a bit complicated when put into words, but it feels practically seamless in the actual game, and it's an idea I was — and still am — super proud of.

The 3-button level is a bit over the place, but the main idea is that you have to press the first button to access the second button, which then opens up an area where you can duplicate yourself, and when you're duplicated and press the first button again you can access the third button with a clone of yourself, which then opens the exit door! It's a bit messy, but I still find it a pretty decent level.

And lastly, the 4-button level, the last one of the pack, is an elevator-style level which is split into four areas. Each area has a button at the end that moves you to the next, and you have to make it through the whole thing to get to the exit! It's a fun idea, however I am not that into how I executed it, as some areas are a bit janky, and there is no indication of when the elevator will close and move to the next area once you press the button.

Here's a video of the whole pack:

In the end, though, I didn't wanna change anything about these levels, and instead just publish them in their original state as I've known them myself for years. This is just a small example of how I've been trying to tackle my procrastination with finishing and releasing projects like this, and I have been getting better at it, so I plan on having a lot more stuff to share soon! In this game, and others