Review

Heroes in a shopping mall

Magic Maze

cooperative looting

A warning at the beginning: If you do not like cooperative speed / time limit games like Escape, Vlaada Chvátil’s ingenious Space Alert or Zombie 15’, you need not go on reading. Magic Maze is not the right game for you, because in Magic Maze it is not another player or players who is your enemy, but the sand timer. 1 to 8 players, my recommendation would rather be for to maximum six, with fewer people you are really stressed out, and with more it turns chaotic due to lack of seating and too many hands on the table, that is, in the Shopping Mall.

But what are we talking about? Our troop of fantasy heroes, comprising Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf and Mage (what else?) have been robbed of all their equipment and so they want to equip themselves afresh in the nearest Shopping Mall with Sword, Ace, Bow and Phial. But they do not want to pay for their equipment, they want to steal it, all at the same them, and then flee the building.

For this, each player is assigned - depending on the number of players - a certain action tile, which determines a compass point direction (for instance, North), in which the receiving player can move all four heroes, but in this direction only. In case of four players, each of them receives one of the four compass points. Furthermore, those tiles show additional important action options: Use the escalator; Discover, what it means to reveal a new shopping mall tile; use the Vortex, which is a kind of teleport to quickly reach the color-marked Vortex spaces on the shopping mall tiles.

The four heroes - represented by very common pawns like Ludo or Halma pawns, in four distinct colors, are placed randomly in the middle of the starting shopping mall tile. According to the chosen scenario (currently there are 17 scenarios and I bet that there will be more scenarios coming in the guise of expansions) you set aside a certain number of the consecutively numbered shopping mall tiles. Somewhere on those tiles you can find the four equipment items for our heroes and the respective color-corresponding exit cases. By the way, each mall tile comprises a grid of 4x4 cases.

Before the three-minute timer is turned over, players may discuss what they want to do with the heroes as soon as the game starts- this can give you valuable seconds in the fight against the timer. Then the timer is turned and you’d better be prepared, because:

1. From now on it is forbidden to talk. Keep your mouth shut, even clearing your throat or something similar is not allowed.

2. You are also not allowed to point your finger at another player to inform him that it is high time that he did something according to his available options. Staring at a player, on the other hand, is allowed. You can also place a rather big so-called „do something“ pawn in front of a player to inform him that an action is expected from him.

3. All players play simultaneously. You can probably understand, that hand injuries are possible in case of more than six players.

4. Each player can move any of the four heroes in the direction given on his action tile or resolve the assigned action option with any hero, if possible due to the position of a hero - for instance, for the escalator action the hero must stand next to the escalator.

You cannot move a hero through walls or past another hero; new shopping mall tiles can only be revealed and added to the grid by the „Exploration“ player, if a hero is standing on an exploration symbol of his color at the edge of a tile next to which no tile was yet added. At the beginning, the maze is rather easily kept track of, even in the heat of play, but the bigger the grid gets and the greater the distances between the four heroes become, the more difficult it is for all players to do all possible actions within the time frame. It happens often that heroes block each other in the narrow corridors or that a player does not grasp the current necessary action.

If a hero is moved on one of the timer cases, the case is marked with a Closed marker and the timer is turned over immediately. Now players may talk again about how to best continue, but only while no player does an action. This triggers silence and meanwhile the sand is running and running and running. You can believe me - three minutes or multiples of three minutes - in case of cleverly timed turning maneuvers for the timer - can be damnably short. Things get worse from Scenario 3, because now you need to hand your action tile with direction and three special actions to the player on his left when the timer is turned over, and that means that you are suddenly responsible for movement in another direction and another special action.

Sometime, finally, all heroes have managed to reach their respective equipment item, or not, in case the last grain of sand runs down before that). If all are at their equipment, the „theft“ tile is turned over and signals, that alarm was triggers, which means that each hero must be taken to the exit in his color and that teleporting by use of the Vortex is no longer possible. In the general chaos it can of course happen, that not all players have located all exit cases or have not yet found the best way to the exit cases; there might be several ways and then it can get really comic, when some players want to use one path and some others want to use the other path to the exit.

In the later scenarios a few additional special rules are introduced: For instance, only the Dwarf can pass through certain „very low“ doors or spy cameras, that are suddenly appearing on tiles, can only be destroyed by the Barbarian. The Elf might activate a better Exploration option (two new tiles are added to the Shopping Mall), and so on.

Conclusion: If you are looking for relaxation and peace in a game after a day of exhausting work, you should choose another game. If you are looking for action, fun, chaos and a definite challenge, you have found the right game in Magic Maze, because this game guarantees a raise in your adrenaline level. All 17 scenarios that are included in the core game promise fun for a long time, albeit the basic principle and aim of the game always being the same - to be fast, keep everything under view, react correctly and communicate silently by staring at people. Magic Maze offers a refreshingly different kind of board game, which is a lot of fun, albeit not for each and every player.

Gert Stöckl

Players: 1-8

Age: 8+

Time: variable

Designer: Kasper Lapp

Artist: Gyom

Price: ca. 24 Euro

Publisher: Sit Down Pegasus Spiele 2017

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Cooperation, time limit, simultaneous play

Users: For families

Special: 1 player

Special: Many players

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Very variable number of players

Hectic and cooperative

Speed-driven

Compares to:

Escape, Space Alert, Zombie 15‘ or competitive: Mondo, 4 Gods, Captain Sonar

Other editions:

Sit Down (de en es fr nl), Ghenos Games (it)

My rating: 6

Gert Stöckl:

Finally, silence in a game, but full action on the table

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 3