Summary: Oblique Mazes are created in Puzzle Maker Pro by setting the grid size, dialling in how much the grid slants, and generating the maze with its matching solution. This guide walks through making one, titling it, styling it, and exporting print-ready pages.
Overview
An Oblique Maze is a square maze drawn on a slanted grid, so it reads like a field of uneven, hand-drawn squares. This tutorial covers making one in Puzzle Maker Pro, from setting the grid to exporting the puzzle and solution. The module uses the standard Settings / Style / Titles tabs (with two extras: the Oblique slant controls and a Masks tab for shaping), so if you have used another module the flow will feel familiar. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Oblique Mazes Work first.
Required Modules
- Puzzle Maker Pro – Oblique Mazes
- Lite makes the Oblique shape (with its slant sliders) as static PNG, JPG, SVG, and PDF (puzzle + solution) and Instant Puzzle Books (a PDF/PPT book, all puzzles the same settings). Creative adds silhouette masking (confine the maze to an image shape — same as the Square Mazes module, since Oblique carves the identical square cell grid under its slant) and Puzzle Book Studio — full control of fonts, titles, page numbers, layout, and trim size. Productivity adds Time Saver and Puzzle Book Studio with multiple puzzle sets. Creative Interactive / Productivity Interactive add JSON web output + online gameplay (Oblique is web-playable) on top of Creative / Productivity respectively. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.
A free demo of the module is available, so you can try Oblique Mazes before buying.
Preparation
Nothing is needed to make a plain maze — no images or lists. For your first maze, a 15 x 15 grid with the default slant and the Default path is a comfortable start. Each maze is generated with exactly one continuous path from Start to Finish.
Set the Grid Size
On the Settings tab, the Shape is fixed to Oblique (this module makes only the one shape), so you start with the grid:
- Width / Height: 5–100, default 15 x 15. Columns × rows — a bigger grid makes a bigger, harder maze.
- Complexity: 0–100, default 75. Lower makes long winding routes; higher makes a bushier maze with more short branches.
Dial In the Slant
This is the control that makes an Oblique Maze oblique — the module’s signature group, and it is available on every edition (it is a plain setting, not a paid feature). Four sliders, each 0–40 (a percentage of the cell spacing), decide how uneven the squares look:
- Horizontal line — default 35 — bows the horizontal grid lines.
- Vertical line — default 0 — bows the vertical grid lines.
- Horizontal cell — default 0 — jitters cell corners sideways.
- Vertical cell — default 35 — jitters cell corners up and down.
Set them all to 0 and you get a normal square grid; raise them and the squares grow progressively more slanted and hand-drawn. The defaults already give the classic “uneven squares” look, so you can leave them as-is or nudge them to taste.
Set the Path
Path decides where Start and Finish sit and how the route runs (not tier-gated):
- Default — suits most mazes (Start top-left, Finish bottom-right).
- Longest path, Random, and Choose endpoints are also available; with Choose endpoints you pick the Start and Finish anchors yourself.
- Choose on preview (right-click) — pick this, generate a preview (see the next step), then right-click directly on the puzzle or solution image to drop your own Start and Finish points one at a time; status labels confirm each is set, and a Clear button lets you start over. Right-clicking only records the point — it does not redraw the maze you are looking at — so once both Start and Finish are set, click Generate again to build the maze that actually uses them.
Shape It (optional, Creative)
The Masks tab confines the maze to a silhouette — a heart, an animal — so the whole grid takes that form. Under the slant, an Oblique Maze carves the same square cell grid as a Square Maze, so masking works exactly the same way: the maze fills the shape without stretching or distorting the picture. It works the same as every geometric maze; see How to Make Shaped Mazes with Masking. You can use the Quick image list (with Round robin) or a Custom painted mask, or leave it as None.
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 Oblique-specific is just the list of options (examples shown for a 15 x 15 Oblique maze; the same feeds the Description field, which defaults to “Find the path from the start to the finish.”):
- Maze — e.g. “Maze”
- Maze Shape — e.g. “Oblique Maze”
- Maze Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Oblique Maze 15 x 15”
- Shape — e.g. “Oblique”
- Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Oblique 15 x 15”
- Custom — your own text (default title “Maze”)
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 Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive edition you can publish the set to play in the browser (Oblique is web-playable), with the email-gate lead-capture option; see How to Play Puzzles Online.
- Time Saver — Productivity includes Time Saver for batch rows; see How to Batch Create Puzzles with Time Saver.
Outcome
You can now make Oblique Mazes end to end — one or a whole book, as gently or as wildly slanted as you like — titled, styled, and exported for print or the web.