Home > Categories > Games & Puzzles > Board Games > Magic Maze review
Recently stripped of your possessions, your group of down-on-their-luck adventurers has nary a copper piece between you. Your only option if you're to resume your dungeon-delving activities is to sack the local mall of valuables and supplies.
Magic Maze is a real-time, co-operative game. Each player can control any of the 4 Hero pawns whenever he wants in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which other players do not have access: move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator... all of this requires rigorous co-operation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes wisely, and complete your mission before the sand timer runs out.
Moreover, you will only be allowed to communicate for short periods during the game. The rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other
Players: 1-8
Ages: 8+
Time: 15 minutes
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Magic Maze is one of those games that can go really well, or really, really badly, depending on who you are playing with. The aim is to explore the mall, locate where the four items are being stored and then get the heck out of dodge before security catches you. Herein lies the problems though. a) as soon as you have located all four items, the timer starts and you have a limited time to get everyone out! b) each player can only move a character a certain direction, so you are reliant on everyone else paying attention and moving said character when you can't anymore. And c) no talking allowed! - see how that could be problematic if your kids aren't getting along or someone just isn't paying full attention...?
The game has a base scenario, great for your first play or two. You can then shake this up by choosing one of several other scenarios, each getting gradually harder. This means there is a good amount of gameplay to it, and the room tiles you place after initial set-up are at random, so your layout is never going to be the same. I don't enjoy this as much as many other games I own, mostly because you seem to need to have everyone in the right frame of mind, otherwise it can be super frustrating and that takes the fun out of the play. I don't really think we're going to be holding onto our copy for much longer.
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