Overview
A Bubble Maze is a round-cell maze — a field of packed circles you trace from Start to Finish. This tutorial covers making one in Puzzle Maker Pro, from choosing a shape to exporting the puzzle and solution. The module uses the standard Settings / Style / Titles tabs (plus a Masks tab for shaping), so if you have used another module the flow will feel familiar. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Bubble Mazes Work first.
Required Modules
- Puzzle Maker Pro – Bubble Mazes
- Lite makes Bubbles and Instant Puzzle Books (a PDF/PPT book, all puzzles the same settings).
- Creative adds the Circle Fractal shape, silhouette masking on Bubbles, and Puzzle Book Studio (full control of fonts, titles, page numbers, layout, trim).
- Productivity adds JSON web output + online gameplay, Time Saver, and Puzzle Book Studio with multiple puzzle sets.
A free demo of the module is available, so you can try Bubble Mazes before buying.
Preparation
Nothing is needed to make a plain maze — no images or lists. For your first maze, the Bubbles shape with about 80 bubbles and the Default path is a comfortable start. Each maze is generated with exactly one continuous path from Start to Finish.
Choose the Shape
On the Settings tab, pick the Shape:
- Bubbles — a packing of circles of varying size (every edition).
- Circle Fractal — an Apollonian gasket of recursively nested circles (Creative edition). When you pick it, a Big circles control appears (3–5) that sets how many large seed circles the gasket grows from — more means smaller, denser, harder.
Set the Bubble Options
- Bubbles (count): 10–400, default 80. More bubbles → a bigger, harder maze. (For Circle Fractal this is roughly how many circles the gasket packs in.)
- Min / Max radius: 5–120 (default 18 / 55) — the range of circle sizes.
- Aspect: Square, Portrait, or Landscape. The maze is letterboxed into the page, never stretched — match your page shape here.
- Complexity (0–100, default 75): lower makes long winding routes; higher makes a bushier maze with more short branches.
- Path (where Start and Finish sit): Default suits most mazes; Longest path, Random, and Choose endpoints are also available.
Shape It (optional, Creative)
On Bubbles, the Masks tab confines the bubble cloud to a silhouette — a heart, an animal — so the whole maze takes that form. It works the same as every geometric maze; see How to Make Shaped Mazes with Masking. (The Circle Fractal is round-framed and does not mask.)
Note: Due to the nature of the bubbles, the silhouette is recognizable, but the bubbles may expand a bit.
Generate and Preview
Set the Quantity to 1 while you dial in the look, then generate a preview. Each maze is unique, and Puzzle Maker Pro builds the matching solution at the same time, with S and E markers at the ends. When the look is right, raise the Quantity and the same settings produce a whole batch of unique mazes — single and batch are the same workflow, just a different number.
Set the Title
On the Titles tab, choose how each maze is named. Smart Titles is the same control on every module — see How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles for the how-to — so what is Bubble-specific is just the list of options (examples shown for a Bubbles maze; the same feeds the Description field, which defaults to “Find the path from the start to the finish.”):
- Maze Shape — e.g. “Maze (Bubbles)”
- Maze Shape Size — e.g. “Maze (Bubbles 500)”
- Maze Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Maze (Bubbles 90 cells)”
- Shape — e.g. “Bubbles”
- Shape Size — e.g. “Bubbles 500”
- Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Bubbles 90 cells”
- Custom — your own text (default title “Maze”)
(On a Circle Fractal maze the same options read “Maze (Circle Fractal)”, “Circle Fractal”, and so on.)
Style It
Walls, the solution line, the floor, the Start/Finish markers, and doorway size are all on the Style tab and shared across every maze; see How to Customize Maze Appearance.
Export
- Print / PDF — PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF of the puzzle and solution, on every edition.
- JSON web output & online gameplay — with the Productivity edition you can publish the set to play in the browser (both shapes), with the email-gate lead-capture option; see How to Play Puzzles Online. JSON output allows you to create your own software to handle the mazes.
- Time Saver — Productivity includes Time Saver for batch rows; see How to Batch Create Puzzles with Time Saver.
Outcome
You can now make Bubble Mazes end to end — round or fractal, plain or shaped, one or a whole book — titled, styled, and exported for print or the web.