Maze of the Week 10 Redux - The Alamo Mission (MOTW #158)

I have made multiple versions of the Alamo Mission Maze. An initial kids version and then my original maze of the week in both black and white and later color. Today we get a full improvement redux - I hope you like it! So Maze of the week #10 also becomes MOTW #158. You can read the original blog post here:

Maze of the Week #10 - The Alamo Mission Maze

And now the redux. I have been using the same program (Inkscape) to make my mazes for many years and I am still learning how to use it. It is free software and I use an old version so everything new I learn is self-taught and by experimenting. I recently found better ways to do things and I decided to go back and revise some mazes.

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Changed the maze size from 34 x 22 to 34 x 19.5. Originally I made the size 2x a tabloid size sheet of paper for easy printing. Now I adjusted the size to reflect the actual maze with printing a secondary concern.

2. Added background details. The maze was floating on the page and I wanted to fix that…

• The first thing I added was the state flag/pole on left side

• I added the ground on each side and extended it off the page.

• I added a small building to the right side and a wall on the left

• Each of the above got textures to reflect the stone they are made of.

3. Added a textured lawn.

4. Changed the font size. The title increased while the location was reduced and moved to the 2nd line.

5. Changed Start & Goal colors. Previously the black lettering was difficult to see so I changed it to blue.

6. Newly Colored Stones. I added some color to a variety of stones on the front of the building to better reflect how it actually looks, including adding some water stains. Previously the building was one consistent color.

7. Added Shadows. I added some shadows to the windows.

8. Added a Sky.

And here are the old and new versions:

I really like the new version !

Some data: The new file is 6224MB from 1480MB.

I will be replacing the homepage with the new maze going forward. You can find the maze download there !

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

Happy maze-ing !

My 2025 Website Outlook

It is time to evaluate the website, the YouTube channel, and the brand to see what I want to do for 2025. Most importantly, what will be the maze theme for 2025 ?

What type of mazes will I see on the site ?

• Every Monday you will get a maze of the week with a corresponding blog post about it.

• I have enjoyed doing case studies as I have learned new drawing techniques, allowing me to improve some of my mazes. Here is a blog post that brings those posts together: A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to improve your Mazes

• For the first half of the year I am going to revise some of my most popular mazes and see if I can improve them. So, Maze of the Week Re-dux’s.

• The second half of the year will be new mazes on a wide variety of subjects, using what I have learned. SEE UPDATE BELOW

Will there be videos on YouTube again ?

• No. There did not seem to me much interest in the making of mazes that I made, so the YouTube videos will stop.

Any new books planned ?

• Many. I will be launching new books during the year on the website. Themed. Typical subjects. I hope to make a lot more Kids maze content.

• I am also working on Books to launch on Amazon in the Fall. Arrow Mazes Vol 2, Weaving Mazes Vol 2 and a few others I will announce in the future.

• I have also pulled together my Comic Book Cover Mazes into a free book for anyone who signs up for my book alerts.

How do I sign-up for new Book alerts ?

• Right here. Any time I launch a new book I will send you an email.

Comic Books; I thought this was a maze site ?

• I really like the comic book style and made a new comic book style maze each week in 2024. Each Tuesday I made the weekly maze into a comic book cover. I will be continuing making Tuesday a day where you get a new Comic Book Cover Maze. The numbering continues.

• However it will not be of the Monday MOTW like in 2024, instead it will be a stand alone maze. So each week will feature 2 new mazes !

• If you want to receive the full comic book from 2024, sign up above and I will send it to you !

Pinterest ?

• I started this in 2024 and didn’t do much with it. I get some traffic to the site from there. You can check out my page/pins. Fell free to share my mazes there ! Honestly I’m not sure which I am worse at, YouTube or Pinterest ?

• I will post there more when I have time.

Blogging ?

• Well I did a new labyrinth blog post each Saturday in 2024, suggesting free labyrinths to visit in each US state. Well, I am out of states, so Saturday blog posts will most likely be gone, leaving me with a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday posting schedule.

• Want to guest blog about maze and labyrinth design ? Drop me an email !

So, in summary:

• Monday - Maze of the Week - Re-dux’s to start

• Tuesday - Comic Book Cover mazes continue

• Thursday - General interest blog posts on mazes and labyrinths

I hope you enjoy the site !

WEEKLY MAZES for the second half of the year:

The first half of the year has focused on me remaking previous mazes with 2 techniques to improve them. I called them Maze of the Week Re-duxes. Generally it worked and I am happy with the results. For the second half of the year we will return to new mazes. I actually have made more mazes than I need for the rest of the year. First, I will clean out the random mazes that include some scenes, items, landscapes and insects. Then starting in Mid-August new mazes will be from my Air, Land, Sea and Space collection. I wanted to create some mazes for kids but with improved illustrations. I ended up making vehicles of all types, thus my name. Planes, trains, cars, buses, rockets, and boats are all included. I made 47 in total (and may make more). I am going to select the best ones for the Maze of the week. The goal will be to create a kids book out of the mazes, including those that don’t make MOTW status. In order to make all the mazes available on the website, I will write a blog post introducing the extra vehicle mazes each Wednesday and a few more on Friday. They are mix or color (some with backgrounds), and black & white versions, including some that are perfect as coloring pages. It starts Monday with a maze I started, then abandoned of a famous monument in the US.

UPDATE from the future: These vehicle mazes are now pulled together in book form in either color or blacka nd white !

I also will be launching books in the Fall - a mix of both free versions on this site and paid versions on Amazon. If you want to be alerted to these launches sign-up for my free book alerts.

Maze Comic Book Cover #53 - BMQ

Issue #53 in my comic book cover series is called BMQ. Check out every comic book cover maze !

That is the last comic book in the yearly series. I hope you enjoyed them ! Come back next week to see how you can get a free full maze book full of each maze from this year ! The book has some revisions to be more kid friendly, including this comic cover which will appear like this for the book:

My 2024 Year in Review

This is my year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. I do this post each year and I keep the previous years data.…so 6 years of progress !! Here are my other posts about the year:

My 10 biggest blog posts of the year

My favorite mazes from 2024 - VOTE

My 2025 Website Outlook

And now the data for the year:

Weekly (Daily) Mazes posted:

2024: 53 - Mazes of the Week, each with an alternative colorway !

2023: 52 - Mazes of the week - see all 52 in this video !

2022: 54 - Mazes of the week

2021: 640 - daily mazes with some Spanish language variations

2020: 366 - daily mazes

2019: 365 - daily mazes

So overall there were 106 mazes this year with the variations. I like the weekly maze vs. the daily maze and don’t see myself ever going back !

Blog Posts:

2024: 227

2023: 192 (189 remain on the site)

2022: 132 (119 remain on the site)

2021: 291 (207 remain on the site)

2020: 102 (84 remain on the site)

2019: 26 (12 remain on the site)

If you want to read the blog posts that remain, check out my blog index. I anticipate less blog posts in 2025 as I reduce my writing schedule to focus on creating mazes ! But 970 blog posts about mazes and labyrinths since the website started is a lot !

Name Mazes Made

2024: 220

2023: 104

2022: 13

2021: 4

2020: 247

2019: 1,499

Since 2021 I have only been doing doing maze name requests when they were submitted. I had many teachers reach out for classrooms full of unique names ! I think I rank well for this on many search engines so I get a lot of maze name traffic !

Books posted online:

2024: 0

2023: 0

2022: 2

2021: 12

2020: 8

2019: 19

I re-published 1 book with some changes to make it more kid friendly…I anticipate this number changing in 2025 !

Books Published on Amazon:

2024: 0

2023: 0

2022: 0

2021: 13

2020: 0

2019: 0

I am working on a new book now. I expect to launch multiple new books in the Fall. Drop me an email if you want to be alerted when I launch a new book.

Website Traffic growth:

2024: + 33% LY

2023: + 36% LY

2022: + 47% LY

2021: + 242% LY

2020: +1000% PL

2019: **

And the bigger you get the harder it is to grow even larger in the future. Unless SEO suddenly likes me (or doesn’t). I made some changes to the site in October. Let’s see if they help grow the site in 2025 !

Different countries visiting the site:

2024: 200 according to Google analytics. Depending on how you count the # of countries, that means just about every country. Except North Korea….and I will need to research to see if anyone else is missing.

2023: 169 - I changed how I track this and think the 100 below might have been inaccurate. Out of 195 or so depending on the list you look at.

2022: 100

2021: 100

2020: 99

2019: 20

YouTube Views:

2024: 1,972

2023: 2,245

2022: 303

2021: 264

The channel is not doing well. I have no plans for videos in 2025 unless I figure out a new format that might work !

YouTube Subscribers:

2024: 31

2023: 17

2022: 6

2021: 3

Considering the numbers of videos on the channel this is terrible.

Pinterest:

I have no idea how to quantify this, but I have a Pinterest Page. It is small. I don’t do much there. Here is my traffic from there to my site:

2024: 1,091 + 343% LY

2023: 318

Large growth as a percent, but a small part of the traffic to the site. I am sure I will focus on this in 2025 for one good week at least….

My top 5 YouTube Videos from 2024

How to Make a Classical 7 Circuit Labyrinth

This video was made in 2023 and I include it because it is my most watched video. All other videos will be from 2024 !

1 - Bison Quick Maze

I have no idea why some mazes get watched and others don’t…Bison ? Of most 20 most watched videos, only 2 are from 2024, this maze and the next. Clearly the making of comic book style mazes is not interesting !

2 - Wolf Quick Maze

3 - Eagle Maze

4 - Dragon Maze

5 - Squirrel Maze

Mazes of the Week #105 - #157

Some statistics about the 52 mazes I featured this year:

• All mazes were done in comic book style, the theme for the year.

• It includes 39 animal mazes, 11 character mazes, and 3 insect mazes. Of those animals it includes 6 birds, 4 aquatic animals and 3 dogs.

• Each maze except the dragon maze included a color or design variation for a total of 104 total mazes. The dragon maze instead had 2 color variations without a maze, but the Bulldog maze had 3 colors so we still get 104 mazes !

• All mazes are stored in the comic style section of the site, which includes some of the early comic book mazes from 2023. Downloads of each maze are available there.

• Each maze was made into a themed comic book cover that can be seen in the comic book cover section.

The Maze List (no links since they can all be found in one place !):

#105 Snowman

#106 Eagle

#107 Penguin

#108 Squirrel

#109 Groundhog

#110 Dinosaur

#111 Dragon

#112 Dog - Labrador

#113 Polar Bear

#114 Vampire

#115 Leprechaun

#116 Panther

#117 Bunny

#118 Spider

#119 Dolphin

#120 Dog- Bulldog

#121 Horse

#122 Frog

#123 Leopard

#124 Monarch Butterfly

#125 Turtle

#126 Therizinosaurus

#127 Bear

#128 Cow

#129 Crocodile

#130 Catfish

#131 Scarecrow

#132 Minotaur

#133 Shark

#134 Tiger

#135 Clown

#136 Owl

#137 Lion

#138 Honey Bee

#139 Dog - Yorkie Poo

#140 Samurai

#141 Warrior

#142 Rhino

#143 Koala

#144 Chicken

#145 Badger

#146 Wolf

#147 Mule

#148 La Catrina

#149 Bison

#150 Peacock

#151 Pirate

#152 Turkey

#153 Elk

#154 Llama

#155 Monkey

#156 Gingerbread Man

#157 Quokka

So that is my year in review. I have a plan for 2025 which is one of my next blog posts. Expect more mazes that hopefully people like !