*stomp* *stomp* *stomp*
“Stop that.”
*stomp* *stomp* *stomp*
“Goddamit, I see it now.”
Magic Maze is a fast-paced real-time board game in which players try to shoplift fantasy items from a mall for their heroic adventures. It includes maze-like mall tiles, timers, vortexes and limited player capabilities.
There are four characters in the game: an elf, a barbarian, a dwarf, and a mage. Each of them has its own corresponding colour and item they need to steal. The colour is the only thing that distinguishes these completely interchangeable characters. You may have noticed that I never said that players take on the role of these heroes, and that is because they don’t. Each player gets an action tile that depicts what kind of actions they can do. For example, only one player will be able to move pawns through escalators and another player will be able to move them to the right. During the first part of the game players will concentrate on discovering all the mall tiles and getting the pawns to their corresponding item. Then once every “hero” shoplifted their treasure they all need to get out of the mall.
And of course, all of this is on a timer. The hourglass runs out pretty fast, but fortunately some of the mall tiles have hourglass symbols on them and if a pawn enters that space the players have to flip the timer. Oh, and there is one more rule that is meant to make everything much more fascinating in this game, turning it into a bit of a psychology experiment: players can’t talk to each other. However, there is a big red TAKE ACTION NOW pawn that you can put, or more likely slam in front of other players to make them do something. As you can imagine, this is not a pleasant experience, for either party.
The Good
Magic Maze is a cute game, and there are multiple scenarios in the rule book to keep things interesting. The scenarios use different mall tiles with new features, like security cameras and crystal balls, and have different difficulty ratings so players can purposefully challenge themselves. I generally like fantasy-themed games, and Magic Maze has magic and elves, so I’m putting theme down as a good point.
The gameplay is also fast, can be funny, and overall feels unique.
The Bad
So, if you have read some of our other reviews you will know that we are no fans of the “no talk” rule. It feels a bit cheap, the game relies on this rudimentary rule to make it challenging instead of having some clever built-in mechanics. Of course maybe for this game they playtested it and realized that aggressive boss-type players will just take over the whole game. But I think that is a general risk with co-operative games, and it is up to us, the players, to not play with jerks. Instead of talking, you can passive-aggressively slam a big red pawn on the table in front of your partner showing your disapproval of their inaction. Again, not a fan of this mechanism.
Some parts of the game are genuinely exciting, like discovering new tiles and figuring out how to get everyone in the right place. But then you inevitably get to a point where the actions are all laid out, there are no more decisions, just two people sitting there, their hands hovering over the board, moving a pawn one space at a time, because you need to move left and down, and these actions are split between the two of you, so one of you moves left, then lets go of the piece, then the other one moves it down and so on, and you both feel kinda stupid. Maybe it is more fun with four players, but my guess would be that it is just more annoying.
I mentioned the fantasy theme as a good feature above, and now I am also going to mention it in this paragraph for the theme not being fantasy-ish enough. The theme somehow doesn’t come together, it just doesn’t make sense, it feels like a random mash-up of our world and the epic fantasy world of heroes. The party is a group of adventuring heroes who go shoplifting. Couldn’t they come up with other scenarios where they need to steal magic items from an evil maharaja or something? It feels weird to help the party with this, I mean, the shop owners don’t really deserve to be ripped off here.
There is also not much strategy to it, at the beginning, you should explore as much as possible with whichever pawn is available, if someone touches a pawn finish its available movements to avoid being all over the place. Then the strategy for running out is even simpler, concentrate on one pawn, get it out, then move on to the next pawn.
We haven’t played through all the scenarios, so maybe there are additional rules or mechanisms later that make it more interesting. But the fact that we could not be bothered with trying all the scenarios is telling.
The Co-Op
You do need to help and rely on each other, however, it doesn’t feel the same way as other co-op games. I didn’t get the friendly let’s help each other vibe during this game, mainly because of the TAKE ACTION NOW YOU USELESS SCUM pawn. Okay, to be fair, when you flip the timer you are allowed to talk, so there is room for some discussions. Still, the game is missing my favourite part of co-op games: the endless discussions on strategy.
The Recommendation
This is a bit tough, because I am sure that a lot of people will find this game funny and entertaining. Once you read the description you’ll know whether you want to try it or not. Do you like hectic real-time games? Then you will enjoy this one as well. If you prefer games with long strategizing discussions then this game will feel a bit gimmicky and stupid.
Info
| Release Year | 2017 |
| Genre | Real-Time |
| Difficulty | Easy |
| Number of Players | 1 to 8 |
| Length | 15 minutes |
Rating
| Overall | Mediocre |
| Story | Terrible |
| Co-Operation | Bad |