This has been a long and painstaking process. I'll be blunt about it. I nearly gave up on this project and game design as a whole, but here we are. I personally apologize for how long this has taken. I have a lot of good excuses, but that's what they are, excuses.
So Instead, we will talk about what is up with this game!!
I switched to an entirely different game engine. No shade to Unreal and the team at Epic, but it just wasn't the engine for me. I had a great time learning it, but I just couldn't get myself to ever really like it. So, we are now using Godot! The game looks quite a bit different as this conversion was my first real project on this engine. I tried to get the game looking similar to the old version, but just never got there fully. I personally like this new direction for it.
The Maze level is A LOT smaller. I mean A LOT. It was honestly always too big, and I wanted the game to feel like it progresses rather than regressing in map size. So now it feels like the final level is the biggest and the maze doesn't take so long to complete. It also helped with a lot of things, like the monster being present and the difficulty of that initial level.
There was also a lot of issues with that level being the very first thing we ever did as a team. That's a few self-taught people working on that first level from novices to whatever we are now. The models were way too complex, and the code probably qualified as a war crime. Now it flows and works, and your computer will *probably not* blow up.
The first part of the Second Level is gone. I just deleted it. Didn't ever feel like it had any identity or belonging in the game and to be honest I didn't really want to deal with it.
Anyways besides that the rebuild of the game came with a lot of other changes like UI, inviting through Steam Invites only, and plenty of small things that you'll see when you play.
I really hope you all enjoy. I'm sure there are a few kinks still in the game and I will try to iron those out as they surface. Enjoy!