The different types of labyrinths and which I feel will suit my game more

After reading some of the book 'The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages' by Penelope Reed Doob, I learned about Unicursal and Multicursal mazes.
Unicursal refers to the maze that has one winding paths that will inevitably lead to the centre; It originates from the Cretan Labyrinth, one of the earliest known version of a maze/labyrinth. Its story forms from the maze that held the minotaur, there was no need for a multicursal maze because there was never an intention of letting those who entered back out, only if they defeated the minotaur in the centre would they be able to make their way back out.

Like this maze for example, it has many curving lines and it looks most likely to consist of multiple paths but it is all one path winding and leading to the centre.

Whereas multicursal consists of numerous dead ends and paths that lead back out of the maze, only one or two paths at most will actually lead to the centre of the maze.

This maze has many visible dead ends and paths that lead nowhere, this makes it multicursal because there are multiple ways to travel through the maze and most will consist of doubling back.

 

If we look throughout history and myth of labyrinths, a multicursal was foten designed to confuse and have the person lose themselves within it, whereas a unicursal would definitely lead you to the centre eventually, losing the sense of puzzle or challenge, it was often whatever was in the centre that would create the challenge.

I feel that both these types could serve some purpose in my game. I feel the use of unicursal mazes as a tutorial level, slowly introducing multicursal in preperation for the final labyrinth which would contain (hopefully) and intricate level of multicursal paths and dead ends each dead end containing a puzzle or set back of some sort.

 

My Labyrinth Moodboard

http://www.pinterest.com/cathleenguiney/labyrinth-images/

Here is a like to a Pin Board I made for all things 'Labyrinth' related including the movie. I will be updating this alot so there will be new images added.
I have tried to comment on most of these explaining why I like them, but for alot of them the fact that they are an interesting concept of a labyrinth is reason enough for me to add them.

After christmas updates and Dissertation Handed In!

Due to the dissertation hand in being in the first week of febuary, my schedule I had originally planned was not realistic, and I ended working alot more on my dissertation over christmas right through until Febuary handin.
Now that the hand in is passed, I am going to update my blog weekly, and at the end of each week I will put a post up explaing what I have done, what I will continue to work on and/or what I plan to do for the next week.
Over christmas my game idea and game mechanics ideas have been changing. I am experimenting with the idea of a labyrinth in my game that the queen is trapped and her daughter with the help of a dragon has to endure a twisting maze and puzzles.

Due to this big change, I have been doing more research on labyrinths and their origins for inspiration on how to create my own maze and how it will pan out.
For this week my plans are :
To continue my research, updating my blog with any interesting nformation/imagery I find.

Try to create different mazes in Maya to put into unity for some grayboxing to see what problems will be encountered.

To follow a tutorial on making celtic knots reccommended to me from my Tutor, Steve Brown.

Presentation

My Powerpoint presentation
basically a summary of all the information I've put up along with some extra things like pictures of games that are influencing how I want the game to look like and play like

Preliminary Work Schedule

Here is a monthly/weekly/daily timetable of how i will roughly be allocating my time work wise.

My Story Concept

•Queen Medb and her daughter Finnabair  (two character that originate from Ard Macha/ Armagh in Ulster) inspire my story. One day Queen Medb goes missing and while her warriors prepare to go to war to get her back from who they think kidnapped her a rivaling clan, Her daughter wanders into a ring of hawthorn trees, falling into the fairy world. She discovers the fairies kidnapped the Queen as she is a great warrior and they hope that they can persuade her to fight for their cause when she awakens. After discovering that three other mythical beings are threatening the existence of the fairies, Finnabair agrees to try and straighten things out. What I hope to do here is have a simple battle between two types of bosses, a mythical bull and a dragon. These are both creatures that are well known to Irish mythology and Armagh specifically.  The end would have a choice for the player t make to leave her mother in the fairy world as the fairies still believe humans are a threat to their world as they are cutting down the Hawthorn Trees or to stay in Queen Medb’s place in the hopes that her mother will figure out a way to save her.

Other concepts

These are just some other sketches i have been doing I drew a dragon as in ireland dragons were referred to as serpents and to make a connection to St Patricks story I thought a dragon encounter could be interesting, I also wanted to have it weave among itself and decided to pick a simple celtic knot design to base this around. Afterlooking at certain designs I thought it would be interesting to use a celtic knot for its eyes as well to make it more mythical and fantasy, I love this look and i htink if i refined it more I will definitely use this concept for my game somewhere.

I also used celtic knot deigns for trees and flowers and I also would love to put this in a graybox and test what these would look like even as 2d planes that are coded to face the camera. 

I also did a fairy concept as it is part of a story concept i had and i wanted to see what it wuld look like using celtic knots as her wings like the wings in my moodboards i quite like it but i think it'd need alot more work.