Gemdalus was conceived by accident. While working on the remaining level of QUOD INIT EXIT IIo (a Commodore 64 game), given the toughness of such task, I decided to take a break and finally produce a game with PTDS. One night, during an unescapable, restless and sleep-blocking brainstorming trip in bed, all of a sudden the core idea of the game popped up, without any connection to the train of thought it broke into, inspired by the Commodore 64 game Oil's Well. It immediately won me over, although it definitely was not suitable for PTDS (it was perfect for ALS, instead, which I am always happy to put to use).
I instantly decided that I would keep the mechanics simple, even if this sort of games lends itself to countless twists and expansions (after all, I have already satisfied my appetite for deep and complex mechanics with several other games of mine).
Choosing the name was quite troublesome. The obvious Gems Maze (which mirrors perfectly Oil's Well) was too simple and generic. After considering various (terrible) alternatives, I came up with Gemdalus, from Gems + Daedalus. Initially it did not sound particularly good, but little by little it grew on me and, eventually, thanks to its uniqueness, became final.