Exploring a Meditation Labyrinth (in Game Form)

Solivitur Ambulando - "It can be solved by walking" 

I'm a little obsessed with labyrinths.  A unicursal labyrinth (as opposed to a maze) is one with a single, winding path that leads you from the entrance to the center. They're often used for contemplative walking and symbolize a journey inward: a slow spiral towards self-discovery or spiritual reflection. As you get closer to the center, you often have to walk in the opposite direction, mirroring the mental twists and turns of introspection.

There are plenty of fascinating labyrinths out there, but most of the time we only ever experience them as top-down diagrams. I started this project as a kind of goofy experiment for myself: what would it feel like to walk through one in 3d? I also thought there was a kind of funny dichotomy between a raycast FPS game (typically associated with violence), and a meditation labyrinth.

The first prototype was ... fine. Interesting enough, but not something I felt like sharing. It was missing something.

Later, I started thinking about what actually happens during meditation. Not just the calm, but the mental chatter.  The meditative act of noticing a thought, labeling it, and gently returning to the present. Mental noting comes primarily from Vipassana mediation(a form of insight meditation from the Theravāda Buddhist tradition), but it also shows up in secular mindfulness meditation. What if that process was a part of the labyrinth game experience? What if, while walking, you were interrupted by thoughts that you had to engage with?

I tried a bunch of ideas, but nothing really worked. Then I remembered the "blooper ink" in Mario Kart, the stuff that splashes across the screen and makes it hard to see. That, I realized, was the metaphor I was looking for.  Thoughts in meditation can feel like that, momentarily blinding, disorienting, and often meaningless. I thought about how to visualize the thoughts, eventually landing on the visual metaphor of  pop-up windows.  

Next, I had to figure out what the thoughts would actually be. At one point, I considered asking players to answer a questionnaire to generate more personalized thought pop-ups. But in the end, I decided to just write from my own experience. I listed out real distractions, worries, and inner voices I'd been dealing with while making the game.  Originally I sorted them into three categories: anxiety, shame, and anger. 

But I hit another snag. Some of the thoughts, especially the angry ones, felt too important to just "dismiss." Like, if a thought is about climate change or injustice, I didn't want the message to be "just ignore it." So I added a "keep" folder, where the player can store thoughts they don't want to discard. At the end of the labyrinth the player gets those thoughts back. It's competently optional, but I like that it lets players get personal with it. I'm curious to see what players save.

In early playtests, I realized that only having negative thoughts made the experience feel more like a slog than a meditation. Real meditation isn't just about ignoring negativity, it's about observing any thought without clinging to it. So I added neutral and positive ones. Initially, I planned separate sorting mechanics depending on the type of thought. The player could choose to sort neutral or positive thoughts however they wanted, while negative ones needed to be sorted exactly. But it felt too complicated, and I didn't love the idea of deciding what thought counts as "positive" or "negative" for someone else. 

Instead, I kept the original three categories, but reframed them. I renamed the folders Notice, Reflect, and Push. Notice for thoughts, observations, and anxieties about the external world, Reflect for observations of the self, and Push for thoughts that strengthen our resolve or push us into action.

There are still some features I might add down the line, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not meant to be a serious meditation tool, more like a subjective interpretation of the act of meditating. Honestly, I find myself playing it when I need a quick reset between tasks. I hope others enjoy it, or at least, find it interesting.