Oh gosh, I used to do stuff like this as a kid. I only needed a piece of paper and pencil though, no other tools. I would draw an adventure puzzle like this, but the big thing was it used BOTH sides of the paper. When you went through a door, you went to the other side of the paper (you'd have to bend the paper around your finger a little bit to estimate where the door led to).
Also, there were many locks and keys and items (think Zelda). A door might have a strange symbol on it, and you needed to find the key with the corresponding symbol to advance. Or you needed to get the lava suit to get past the pit of lava.
This is what I did during class in elementary school, and challenged my friends and brother to beat them. Now that I'm 26, I still do the same thing, but with computers and in 3D.
Totally did this too, though without the innovation of using two sides of the paper. I'd draw mazes with monsters and stuff on grid paper, and use a piece of paper with hole cut in it to implement the player's vision (can only see 5 squares around etc.) Good times...
We did these too! But our little group of kids used two variants: the first was meant to be played by tracing your path with a pencil (so we could erase and reuse the map) through really narrow passages. The second was more interpretative; the players needed to use tools and the environment to progress (such as chopping down a tree and building a canoe to go through a river). We even had recurring characters from our real life experiences.
Our textbooks were full of mini maps like these around the edges.
Haha awesome. I recall drawing insane war scenarios with stick soldiers in the most ridiculous situations. Every inch of the paper was different from the next.
Also, there were many locks and keys and items (think Zelda). A door might have a strange symbol on it, and you needed to find the key with the corresponding symbol to advance. Or you needed to get the lava suit to get past the pit of lava.
This is what I did during class in elementary school, and challenged my friends and brother to beat them. Now that I'm 26, I still do the same thing, but with computers and in 3D.