Tag: Maze »

Scientists seem to love locking up tiny animals and experimenting on them. At least in video game fiction. The fortunate thing about this is that it makes for plenty of opportunities to create a game based around escaping the evil scientific facility. In this particular instance it’s the driving factor behind Chillingo and Kiz Studios’ new maze chase iOS title, Critter Escape!.

As is to be expected, players will have to guide a “so ugly it’s cute” critter through level after level of increasingly perplexing mazes full of enemies, obstacles, power-ups, and challenges. Simply completing a stage should be simple enough no matter the player’s gaming prowess, but getting the coveted three star rating will require some fairly significant skills. Especially in the latter half of the game’s 120 levels. This requires not only making it to the exit, but also grabbing the crystal hidden somewhere in the maze, as well as completing a specific challenge such as finishing without being seen or under a certain time limit.

Critter Escape! isn’t just “another” maze chase game, however. While it defaults to a line-drawing control scheme (other options are available, including a virtual stick), it’s a very smart line-drawing controls scheme that automatically finds its way around obstacles. It also features a wealth of customization options that can be cosmetic (i.e. a funny hat) or both cosmetic and game-changing (i.e. a ninja suit that makes it easier to avoid guards). There’s also plenty of hidden content (bonus levels, etc) to encourage repeat play.

Keep an eye out for on-the-lamb potato monsters at the end of the summer, when Critter Escape! will be available to the masses for $0.99.

Firstly, a clarification. This review is of the iPad version of Cosmica, a scrolling maze game which can boast freshness, fun, and challenge as parts of its quality. The denoted score is not for the iPhone version. While it boasts the same qualities, those qualities are heavily negated by that version being presently borderline unplayable.

More on that later.

Before all that, let's celebrate the derserving iPad version. It's a simple enough idea, a top-down scrolling maze game. In Cosmica, however, I have to keep my finger held on the screen at all times, dodging and weaving my way as I automatically move up through the labyrinth. It's much like how I'd hold down a pen to draw a line through a maze on paper, and it's that parallel that gives Cosmica an instant click. And yet conversely as an iOS game it feels strangely fresh (or maybe even freshly strange).

There are also little spins on traditional obstacles, things like walls that move from side to side, one-way gates, and some very knotty revolving doors. These spins, alongside the sweeping speed at which the maze scrolls down the screen, force me to stay on my toes (or in this case on my fingernail), especially given how I'm only allowed to make three errors per run. This turns Cosmica into a kind of memory game in which the maze's specific twists and turns have to be memorized, especially when there are flocks of one-way gates to be negotiated, set out in deliberately confusing, dexterity-heavy ways. It reminds me of Bit.Trip Beat, except it's not as tricky as that particular gem.

Except, however, on iPhone... and here's where I lay my beef with that version. The smaller screen means that I need to be far more careful with how steady I keep my finger. That would be OK in and of itself, I don't mind an especially difficult game that's still doable, but when you couple it with frequent and often ill-timed stutter and slowdown, it makes for the kind of experience that leads to a smashed up iPhone/wall/fist. Way too infuriating. Maybe some laxity in the form of extra lives would help. Certainly far less pushing of the device's graphical power - even though it's top down Cosmica's pause menu reveals that it's running in a 3D engine - would do wonders for the iPhone version.

So while I can't recommend it for iPhones as it is, I definitely recommend checking it out on iPad. If you liked Bit.Trip Beat but wished there were more mazes (and less beats) in it, Cosmica is the game for you.

A new maze game has been released by bladibladibla.com (an interesting and humorous name) called Draw Maze. In addition to working through mazes, players can also use this app to create their own mazes.

Players will challenge themselves in this difficult maze game to work their way through a series of complex mazes. After finishing these mazes that come with the app, players can then go on to create their own mazes and challenge their friends to overcome their self-drawn madness. Not only can players send mazes to their friends to play against one another, they can also compete for the high score on the mazes that come with the app and become the "World Record" holder. The developer is even adding the trickiest designed mazes sent in as featured new levels.

While the game is universal and can be played on any iOS device, the developer's preferred platform is the iPad. Considering the significant increase in screen real estate on the iPad compared to the iPhone, this is no surprise. Draw Maze is a free app. So grab it and start trying to stump your friends.

So called twitch gaming, reacting quickly to a situation within a game, is often quite satisfying. It doesn't need fancy graphics or detailed storytelling, it simply needs an addictive form of gameplay to entice. Tap Maze hopes to do exactly that by testing both the player's reactions and their reasoning.

It's a free to download universal game that requires players to move a small white ball to the goal of each level while avoiding the obstacles within each stage. Often these obstacles move around so Tap Maze is frequently far from an easy game to complete.

As the screenshots show, the mazes within each level get increasingly complex thus requiring fast reactions indeed. Tap Maze might lack the graphical finesse of some titles but it certainly hopes to make up for this with challenge. It looks ideal for both a quick session or an extended play.

Tap Maze is out now for all iOS devices as it's an universal app. Check out the launch trailer below.