I announced this on social media, because I wanted people to actually see it, but I suppose I should comment on it here: I have invented a new kind of maze! You know, like when you have a maze in an activity book? And you have to draw your way through? Well, what if one of those was partially an RPG? With hitpoints and stuff? I invented it! I call it an “adventure maze”!

Okay, I fully admit someone has presumably designed something like this before, but that didn’t stop me from doing it too.

The Caves of Planet Karvakus a science fiction adventure maze about a spaceship crew who have crashed onto a dangerous planet and have to explore a series of caves to find the materials needed to repair the ship. There are three characters, some with special powers, and the caves are filled with traps and monsters. The maze is designed to be challenging, hopefully appealing to an older audience who might enjoy this sort of thing (though my seven-year-old nephew did one of the mazes and enjoyed it). I feel like it would have appealed to me when I was a young teenager.

I’ll be honest, it was a lot of work, but I assume if I do it again it’d only be easier. And I do want to do it again. I hope there’s someone out there who would enjoy it.

The Caves of Planet Karvakus, as well as other printable colouring and activity books I’ve made, is available at Bottomless Hippopotamus.

If anyone actually visited this site and looked around, they’d see that there has been a “Store” section on here that was completely unused for a long time. Since 2010 or so it has consisted only of the following:

Well the future is now! I have begun a shop on Etsy on which I am selling a little printable colouring an activity book called The Many Monsters of Mackestry Manor. I hope to turn that into a series of such books, but hopefully I will have other things on the store as well down the line.

I have opted to keep using the name Bottomless Hippopotamus to maintain a continuity in my attempts to accomplish this. Maybe I only ever sold one or two things on Cafepress (not including the Adventure Dennis mug I still own), but it was still a part of my past that led to this shop here, so the name continues and I can tell myself this is what I’ve been building toward after all these years of failure and stagnation. This is, hopefully, me taking a step in the right direction.