Amaze

What is the game called? Amaze! What's in it? A maze! Now that we've got that taken care of...

Due to unexplained factors, our protagonist, a roguelike yellow happy face, has found him or herself stranded in the middle of large, multi-segmented textmode labyrinth (each segment coincidentally about the size of one metric computer screen, decorated with a different colour scheme and using different characters as obstacles), filled with endlessly re-spawning enemies (red faces), finite ammunition refills, health bonuses and abstract dangers only hinted at through the use of arcane ASCII symbols one can't even name. Sometimes messages spelled out plainly in the room layout address the player directly. The enemies carry on their own routine in realtime, Kroz-style, so the hero may as well move along at a brisk pace in search of the maze's exit... supposing that there even is one.

The game was later (but not too much longer -- same year of release) gussied up with extra flashes and bleeps and a new introductory scroller and distributed in crippled shareware form as Insanity, boasting new, unfamiliar messages among the traditional map lay-outs, and hinting at adventure-game puzzle-solving through the inclusion of new objects in the maps. Since this version boots the player after a single death, it is difficult to track further changes.