Magic Maze - The Best Way to Restock an Adventure

Jake
Sep 19, 2017
4 min read

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Number of Players: 1-8

Play Time: 3-15 Min.

Age: 8+

Complexity Rating (Lower = Easier): 1.7/5

Website: http://sitdown-games.com/magic-maze.html

Type: Family

Publish Year: 2017

Designer: Kasper Lapp

Artist: Gyom

Publisher: Sit Down!, 2Tomatoes, Dude Games, Ghenos Games, Lifestyle Boardgames Ltd, Pegasus Spiele

Description

Description from the publisher: After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That's the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take action. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

The Review

The game begins with the center mall tile where all of the heroes randomly start. Before the game begins, players are allowed to talk and discuss their future moves but once that the hourglass is flipped, you can not communicate to each other. It does suggest not to restrict communication in the first game you play so that you can get used to the play style but after that, we wanted to play it according to the rules so we used the "Pay Attention" Meeple instead and did not talk to each other back and forth. This "Pay Attention" Meeple is an interesting concept as it allows you to point out the fact that someone should be doing something but it does not allow you to point out to specifically what they should be doing. Also, it is fun to whack it down a couple of times on the table.

What is different about this game is that instead of every player getting a certain character to move around the board, everyone has access to all the characters but can only move them in certain ways. One person might be able to move the characters north and east and use the Vortex system, while another one might be able to move them south and west and use escalators and search new rooms.

There are no turns in this game. With the real-time strategy, everyone can move the characters around if they have the ability to. Now you may think that this would make the game a little confusing, but when you toss in the fact that you can not talk to each other and everyone has their hands flying back and forth moving the pawns around, it can make it really fun. As an example, if someone moves a pawn too far north it can turn out to be a regrettable action because someone else might have wanted to move that pawn a few squares sooner to the east to open up a new tile or use the Vortex system, but as long as it does not break the rules, it is allowed and can be frustrating. You do not get too much time to fix these mistakes as well, as there is a 3-minute timer counting down from the start of the game, and there is only one way to get more time, flip it. If a character goes to a timer tile, the sand timer flips over wither it is going to give more timer or less.

Once everyone is in their positions to pick up their loot, the alarm goes off and while.. all hell breaks loose. You can not use the Vortex system going forward and by then you might have used a good portion of the Timer Tile so the clock counts down quickly.

This fast pace game is excellent and keeps you on your metaphorical toes at all times. Its colours can be confusing sometimes but I think that is half the fun and when you mix up some of the cards and flip the Vortex tile, it can be extra amusing. Overall this is a great game, and we look forward to your thoughts on it, and what Mr. Lapp comes up with next.

Pros and Cons