Just why?

Play the game at Itch.io. The itch.io version of the game has a fullscreen button which you will surely need.

"Just why?" is a brutally difficult classic mouse maze game. The entire game takes place inside a large underground factory complex contained within a single screen. There are a multitude of hazards to dodge inside the tight corridors.

"Just why?" was inspired by another maze game I played many years ago in which you similarly controlled your mouse inside a large building on a single screen (if anyone remembers the name of the game, please comment below).

The game was coded in Vanilla JavaScript in less than 48 hours. I used the standard object-oriented Scene/Entity setup which I am very fond of. The game uses the HTML5 2D canvas for rendering sprites which I drew in GIMP and then packaged into a texture atlas using a Python utility program.

Ever since I made Dreader I've wanted to make another mouse maze game. They are fun and relatively easy to create and allows for a ton of variation in themes.

Mouse mazes don't need fancy collision logic. Instead you can just check the color below the player to determine if its inside a hazard. This kind of simplified collision system was also why my game https://js13kgames.com/entries/retrohaunt could pack such a large world into 13 kB. In "Just why?" the collision logic works by first rendering the world half-way, then checking for collisions, then adding the final overlay effects (colors, particle effects).

Finally, the sound effects in the game were created using https://sfxr.me/

Feedback and critique are most welcome!

Minor update: I made the ending timer be visible ingame for speedrunning purposes.