Sol Maze: A Shifting Puzzle Game

What I Built

Sol Maze is a dynamic, grid-based puzzle game that revolves around the duality of light and shadow. The core mechanic requires players to navigate a maze where the rules of the world flip between "Day" and "Night" phases. During the Day phase, light zones are walkable paths and shadows act as solid walls. When the game shifts to the Night phase, the mechanics invert entirely, the shadows become your paths, and light zones block your way.

I intended to create a mind-bending puzzle experience where players could play in a shifting environment, with players timing their phase shifts to collect Sun Stones and Moon Stones to unlock the exit. To keep the challenge fresh, I added procedural generation to the game design. The randomised mazes and item placement mean that there is endless replay potential with no two playthroughs being the same and players having to keep changing their strategies

To tie directly into the challenge theme, I created a special June Celebration Calendar mode. This mode features custom-designed, themed mazes celebrating various events throughout the month of June. Players can explore the colorful paths of the Pride Maze, navigate nature themes for World Environment Day, and experience unique levels dedicated to Juneteenth, Father's Day (Hardest), World Music Day, and the Summer Solstice itself.

Code

AamishB / SOL_MAZE

Welcome to Sol Maze, a grid-based maze game built with Pygame where the core mechanic revolves around the duality of light and shadow during the solstice, but it also features various modes to play.

Link : SOL_MAZE

🎮 Gameplay (Standard Mode)

Day Phase: Light zones are walkable paths. Shadows are impassable walls.
Night Phase: The mechanics invert. Shadows become paths, and light zones become walls.
Goal: Navigate the changing environment to collect Sun Stones (in the light) and Moon Stones (in the dark) to unlock the exit.

🚀 How to Run Locally

Install Dependencies Make sure you have Python 3 installed. Then, install the required packages:
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
Run the Game
```
python main.py
```

🛠️ Controls

Arrow Keys: Move the player
Tab / S: Skip to the next solstice phase (Day <-> Night)
F11: Toggle Fullscreen
ESC / P: Pause Menu

…

View on GitHub

How I Built It

I developed Sol Maze using Python and Pygame for the core rendering and event loop, alongside NumPy for efficient grid-based maze generation and state manipulation.

A major technical focus was the shifting "Solstice" mechanic, where the walkability of light and shadow zones dynamically inverts. To manage this and the various June Celebration Calendar modes cleanly, I separated the game's core state logic (engine.py) from the frontend rendering (ui/game.py). This modular approach made it easy to seamlessly introduce new themes, mechanics, and UI overlays.

I pair-programmed the entire project alongside Antigravity, which helped me prototype mechanics quickly and refine the game's architecture. Finally, I utilized Pygbag (this makes the loading of game slower) to ensure the project could be packaged and played effortlessly in the browser.

Prize Category

Best Google AI Usage:
I used Antigravity as my dedicated coding partner from start to finish helping me build the maze engine, implement the UI, and debug the Pygame loop. Furthermore, the game's background art and visual assets were generated using Google Gemini AI, allowing me to perfectly blend AI-generated aesthetics with AI-assisted code.

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