Fun way to do programmable movement ?

I have a suggestion, depicted in an image here:

https://imgur.com/a/UTRtjhj

To summarize: The player places tiles on their player board in the direction they want to go. Then they move their piece in the maze in the programmed directions, from left to right. Then they throw their detection dice to determine their Minotaur threat.

All positive detection result dice are placed on the player's board, from right to left. Any tile overlapped by a detection die is removed from the player's pool of tokens until they spend a turn hiding/recharging/whatever.

This adds much more player control to turns, so they make purposeful moves, but need to balance the risk of moving a lot in a single turn with being detected and potentially losing a turn while they hide again.

Hiding isn't really fun, but hopefully there will be things the player can do during their turn which will make it all worth it.

You can also add in different tiles to the player's assortment as they pick up equipment: "Attack" tiles with weapons, "Search" or "Pick Lock" or "Climb" tiles for other equipment, etc.

Unless you want to factor in the completely random "bad roll" that gives the player the choices of "pass my turn" or "arrange my dice in an order that doesn't take me too far away from my next objective," then I don't recommend you depend on the dice to sort player directions. It's like throwing the dice, and simply hoping that the proper result(s) result from it. There's no player choice when depending on dice, and the possibility of a sub-optimal outcome is high, as it is with disappointment and frustration.

If you allow players to mitigate bad rolls (using special abilities or equipment or what not), this only adds to turn time.

Regarding analysis paralysis when planning turns with tiles: I imagine throwing dice and trying to arrange the results as close to an optimal move would be just as taxing (if not more) on brains and time. The upshot I can see from here is that the player has maximum control of the outcomes, with the exception of the Minotaur's behaviour - which should not be in their control anyway.

If you attempt to use the tile method and it still seems like players are taking too long to determine their tile placement, then your game may be suffering from unclear objectives. AP can also come from players not understanding what their "next best move" would be at any given time:

• everything seems to have the same benefit and no choice seems better than any other
• all consequences for failure are steep and the choice is too intimidating
• they feel they're losing and have no way to catch up, and become disengaged
• etc.