Surviving School turns a school into a maze. It is an obstacle game on the surface, and underneath it is about getting through trauma and fear rather than escaping a building.
Where the level design came from
I made this out of what school was actually like for me. The students who make a hobby of other people. Homework arriving faster than it can be finished. A teacher who has decided not to notice. Those are the obstacles in the game because those were the obstacles.
I did not want to exaggerate them into monsters. They work better as what they are: ordinary, repeated, and difficult to explain to anyone who is not in the corridor with you.
The character you play
The protagonist is timid and easy to hurt, which is deliberate. You do not get a version of yourself who can handle it. You navigate an oppressive space as someone who is genuinely affected by it, and you keep going anyway.
The end of the maze
There is hope waiting at the end — a girl, standing in the last room. She is not a reward for finishing. She is the reason the corridors were worth crossing, which is a different thing.
Who it is for
Students like me. If somebody plays it and recognises their own week in it, then the message got through without my having to say it out loud, which has always been the part I am worst at.