YOU SHOULD’VE DRAWN IT FIRST

Franchise Video Game Outline

Genre: Puzzle adventure / memory maze / sketchbook survival
Tone: Strange, funny, eerie, smart, visually iconic
Core fantasy: You are not lost because you are stupid. You are lost because you forgot to draw the map.

Core Concept

You Should’ve Drawn It First is a game about entering impossible Rubik’s Cube-like labyrinths where the only real weapon is observation.

Before each maze begins, the player stands outside the entrance and is shown a strange image, symbol, structure, creature, or architectural clue. The player has a limited amount of time to draw it inside an in-game sketchbook.

Once inside the labyrinth, the world begins shifting. Corridors rotate. Doors move. Symbols change meaning. Floors become walls. Staircases fold into cubes. The drawing made before entering becomes the player’s first clue.

But the maze is alive.

As the player moves through each level, they discover that the first drawing was never enough. They must keep adding notes, sketches, arrows, corrections, warnings, and symbols to survive.

The rule of the game is simple:

You should’ve drawn it first.

Franchise Premise

Every game in the franchise follows a different protagonist trapped inside a reality-bending maze system known as The Draft.

The Draft is an ancient puzzle dimension that punishes people who rush forward without understanding what they saw.

It does not reward speed.
It rewards attention.

Each maze tests a different kind of perception:

Memory.
Perspective.
Pattern recognition.
Symbol reading.
Spatial awareness.
Emotional interpretation.
Creative thinking.

The player does not just solve the maze.

The player learns how to see.

Main Gameplay Loop

Each level follows a clear ritual:

1. The Entrance Image

Before entering the labyrinth, the player is shown an image beside the door.

It may be:

A statue.
A wall drawing.
A broken machine.
A monster’s silhouette.
A room layout.
A sequence of symbols.
A warning sign.
A weird face.
A cube pattern.
A map that lies slightly.

The player has limited time to sketch it.

They do not need to be an artist. The game allows rough sketching, labels, arrows, circles, and text notes.

The point is not beauty.

The point is survival.

2. The Sketchbook

The sketchbook is the player’s main tool.

Inside it, the player can:

Draw the entrance clue.
Mark doors.
Write warnings.
Add symbols.
Compare previous sketches.
Rotate pages.
Tear pages out.
Overlay transparent notes.
Create mini-maps.
Mark traps.
Track moving rooms.
Record monster behavior.
Write “DO NOT TRUST THIS WALL” and be correct.

The sketchbook becomes a living archive of paranoia and intelligence.

3. Entering the Labyrinth

After the sketching timer ends, the player enters the maze.

The labyrinth behaves like a Rubik’s Cube:

Rooms rotate.
Corridors slide.
Color zones swap positions.
Doors reassign themselves.
A staircase may become a ceiling.
A symbol may open one door in Scene 2 and kill you in Scene 9.
A path that was safe may become a trap if the cube turns.

The player uses their drawing to identify patterns and survive.

4. Change Events

At key moments, the maze changes.

When it changes, the player hears a sound:

A cube click.
A pencil snap.
A page turning by itself.
A child laughing behind a wall.
A ruler slamming shut.

The player must pause and update the sketchbook.

A new note might save them later.

Failing to document changes makes the later parts harder.

5. Exit Test

At the end of each maze, the player reaches an exit chamber.

The chamber asks the player to prove they understood the level.

Not with a multiple-choice quiz.

With the sketchbook.

The player may need to:

Reconstruct a path.
Identify a fake symbol.
Show which room rotated.
Draw the missing side of a cube.
Match a creature to its shadow.
Mark the original entrance from memory.
Correct their own earlier drawing.

The game judges understanding, not drawing skill.

The 13 Levels / 13 Scenes

The first game has 13 levels and 13 scenes, each functioning like an episode in a larger mystery.

Each level introduces a new type of maze logic.

Level 1 — The Door That Was Already Open

Theme: Basic observation
Entrance image: A simple door with three symbols above it
Maze mechanic: One symbol is always missing from the real doors
Lesson: Draw first. Walk second.

This is the tutorial. The player learns that rushing into the labyrinth without drawing causes confusion immediately.

The first exit teaches the title of the game through failure:

“You should’ve drawn it first.”

Level 2 — The Hallway With Too Many Lefts

Theme: Directional memory
Entrance image: A hallway diagram with left turns marked
Maze mechanic: Left turns sometimes become right turns after cube rotation
Lesson: The map is not the territory, but the sketchbook remembers the first lie.

The player learns to mark orientation, not just shape.

Level 3 — The Laughing Blueprint

Theme: Architecture that mocks you
Entrance image: A blueprint with impossible rooms
Maze mechanic: The map changes only when the player is not looking
Lesson: Draw what changed, not what you wish stayed true.

The sketchbook starts becoming messy. That mess becomes useful.

Level 4 — The Staircase That Forgot Gravity

Theme: Vertical space
Entrance image: A tower cross-section
Maze mechanic: Floors rotate into walls
Lesson: Up is only temporary.

The player must start drawing cube faces, not flat maps.

Level 5 — The Room That Copies You

Theme: Reflection and duplication
Entrance image: A mirrored room with one wrong reflection
Maze mechanic: Duplicate rooms appear, but one detail is always incorrect
Lesson: Differences matter more than similarities.

This level introduces “false memory rooms.”

Level 6 — The Animal Made of Arrows

Theme: Creature behavior
Entrance image: A strange creature composed of directional arrows
Maze mechanic: A maze creature moves according to its own symbolic rules
Lesson: Monsters are also maps.

The player must draw how the creature moves to avoid it.

Level 7 — The Museum of Wrong Exits

Theme: False endings
Entrance image: Thirteen exit doors in a museum hall
Maze mechanic: Most exits loop backward unless matched to the original sketch
Lesson: Escape is a pattern, not a door.

This is the first major difficulty spike.

Level 8 — The Clock That Draws Back

Theme: Time pressure
Entrance image: A clock face with impossible numbers
Maze mechanic: Some rooms rewind the player’s movement but not their sketchbook
Lesson: Your notes can survive what your body cannot.

This level makes the sketchbook feel magical.

Level 9 — The City Inside the Cube

Theme: Scale
Entrance image: A tiny city folded into a cube
Maze mechanic: The maze becomes huge, but still follows cube logic
Lesson: A city is just a maze that got confident.

The player navigates streets, alleys, subway tunnels, rooftops, and cube-rotating districts.

Level 10 — The Page That Lies

Theme: Unreliable tools
Entrance image: A blank sketchbook page with a single black dot
Maze mechanic: Some notes in the sketchbook begin changing by themselves
Lesson: Even memory can be edited.

The player must learn to mark trusted notes versus corrupted notes.

Level 11 — The Labyrinth That Reads You

Theme: Psychological puzzle design
Entrance image: A portrait of the player character, unfinished
Maze mechanic: The maze changes based on repeated player habits
Lesson: The maze has been drawing you too.

If the player always turns left, the maze punishes left turns.
If the player avoids symbols, symbols become mandatory.
If the player over-sketches, pages become limited.

Level 12 — The Thirteenth Door

Theme: Pattern completion
Entrance image: Twelve doors and one empty space
Maze mechanic: The missing door must be constructed through correct observation
Lesson: The exit was never hidden. It was unfinished.

This level combines all previous mechanics.

The player must use drawings from all prior levels to create the thirteenth door.

Level 13 — The First Drawing

Theme: Origin and revelation
Entrance image: The very first drawing from Level 1, but altered
Maze mechanic: The entire game world folds into one giant cube
Lesson: You were not mapping the maze. You were teaching it how to become visible.

The player revisits fragments of every previous level, now twisted into one final labyrinth.

The sketchbook is full.

The maze is almost complete.

The Big Finale — The Blank Wall

At the end of Level 13, the player reaches a massive blank wall.

There is no door.

No symbol.

No clue.

No monster.

No sound.

Just a wall and the sketchbook.

The player must draw the exit themselves.

This is the final twist:

The game has trained the player for 13 levels to copy, observe, correct, and survive.

Now the player must create.

The maze does not open because the player found the answer.

It opens because the player finally understands the rule:

Drawing is not decoration. Drawing is thinking before moving.

The final line appears:

“You drew it first.”

Then the wall becomes a door.

Main Character

The protagonist can be customized, but the default character is:

Mika Vale

A young urban explorer, failed art student, and obsessive notebook keeper who enters The Draft after finding a strange sketchbook in an abandoned school.

Mika is not a chosen one.

Mika is just someone who pays attention.

The franchise can later introduce other protagonists, each with a different drawing style and reason for entering the maze.

Core Mechanics

Sketch Timing

Before each level, the player gets a limited sketch window.

Difficulty modes affect time:

Story Mode: Longer sketch time
Normal Mode: Balanced sketch time
Panic Mode: Very short sketch time
Ink Mode: No erasing
Blind Draft Mode: Entrance image disappears if you look away

Drawing Recognition

The game does not require perfect drawing.

It recognizes:

Shapes
Labels
Arrows
Circles
Numbers
Symbols
Connections
Room layouts
Relative positions

The system rewards meaningful notes over artistic skill.

A crude drawing with useful labels can beat a beautiful drawing with no information.

The Sketchbook Interface

The sketchbook should feel physical.

Pages can be flipped quickly.
Pages can be bookmarked.
Pages can be stained, torn, folded, or corrupted.
The player can pin a note to the corner of the screen.
Important pages can be layered over the current maze view as transparent guides.

The sketchbook is both inventory and memory.

Maze Rotation System

Each labyrinth is built like a cube system.

Possible transformations:

90-degree room rotation
Corridor swapping
Door reassignment
Symbol inversion
Gravity flips
Room duplication
Mirror states
Time rewinds
Memory corruption
Perspective shifts

The maze never changes randomly. It follows rules. The player must discover and document those rules.

Enemies and Hazards

The Erasers

Small white crawling creatures that try to remove notes from the sketchbook.

The Smudges

Shadowy forms that blur symbols on walls.

The Rulers

Tall, thin figures that force the maze into straight lines, crushing curved paths.

The Compass Liars

Floating compass creatures that always point somewhere convincing, but wrong.

The Red Pencil

A major recurring antagonist that corrects the player’s drawings in hostile ways.

It crosses things out.
It rewrites arrows.
It adds doors that do not exist.
It circles mistakes before they happen.

Visual Identity

The game should look like a collision between:

A Rubik’s Cube
A school notebook
A haunted architecture model
An impossible children’s puzzle book
A black-and-white comic
A design student’s panic attack
A maze drawn during detention

Visual style:

Black ink lines
Bright cube colors
Graph paper textures
Pencil scratches
Red correction marks
Handwritten warnings
Rotating geometric architecture
Sketchbook UI overlays
Big symbolic doors
Unfriendly educational posters

The game should feel playful and threatening at the same time.

Audio Identity

Sound is essential.

Key sounds:

Pencil scratching
Pages flipping
Cube clicking
Rulers snapping
Distant classroom bells
Footsteps inside walls
Doors folding
Graph paper tearing
Low mechanical breathing
Whispered warnings from old notes

The maze should sound like a school supply cabinet became haunted.

Franchise Potential

Game 1: You Should’ve Drawn It First

The origin story. The player discovers The Draft and survives the 13 labyrinth scenes.

Game 2: You Should’ve Drawn It First — Red Pencil

The Red Pencil becomes the main villain. The player’s sketchbook is actively edited against them.

Game 3: You Should’ve Drawn It First — The Wrong Map

A co-op game where two players see different maze layouts and must communicate through shared drawings.

Game 4: You Should’ve Drawn It First — City of Doors

The cube maze expands into an entire city where every building is a puzzle.

Animated Series

Each episode follows a different person trapped in a different maze, with a different drawing style.

Board Game / Card Game

Players draw clues, rotate maze tiles, and try to escape before their notes become useless.

Merchandise

Sketchbooks
Pencils
Graph paper posters
Rubik’s Cube-style maze toys
“Draw First. Panic Later.” shirts
Red Pencil villain figurines
Maze door art prints

Taglines

Draw first. Run second.

The maze remembers what you forgot.

Every wrong turn was already in your notebook.

A puzzle game for people who should have paid attention.

You are not lost. You are undocumented.

The exit exists, but only if you can prove you saw it.

Official Franchise Statement

You Should’ve Drawn It First is a puzzle adventure franchise about observation, memory, and the strange power of making marks before making moves. Set inside impossible Rubik’s Cube-like labyrinths, the game turns the player’s sketchbook into the most important tool in the world. Every level begins with a picture, a warning, or a clue that must be drawn before entering the maze. Once inside, the architecture shifts, the rules mutate, and the player must keep documenting reality before reality changes again.

Across 13 levels, 13 scenes, and one final confrontation with the blank wall, the game teaches one brutal lesson:

The maze was never impossible.

You just should’ve drawn it first.