Fractal maze

Rules


You need too bring the cursor to the "►" character, which marks the exit. Cursor can follow along the paths. Sometimes the path goes under another path (and looks disconnected). In this case the cursor cannot jump from one path to another. Rectangular blocks of lowcase characters are sub-level mazes, which both are almost identical to the top level on the inside. They even have their own little sub-sublevels and so on. The only difference is the exit. There is only one true exit -- on the topmost level, all the sublevels have it closed. The game tracks your descent progress and shows it at the bottom as a row of digits. For example, in the picture you are in sublevel 2 of sublevel 1 of sublevel 2 of sublevel 2 of the top level.

Code and comments

FRACTALM.NSG

The game is a "compression" of another full-size MSX basic game of mine. The original game has a maze which is pretty big and, I am sure, likely, not possible to fit in 3 lines. I found a smaller maze instead. I worked it into a rectangular grid and after several steps of optimization (some are shown)

I ended up with 9x14 design. This I deemed small enough to try to fit (together with game's logic and constraints) and the result is what you see here.

Shortcomings

There was no room to detect arrival at the goal. The player has to bring the cursor next to a "►" while the descent stack is empty (top level). This is when the game is won.
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