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Be A-MAZEd
Have you every played Labyrinth? There’s a bunch of versions but the OG has been on our shelf for a number of years now. For us, it’s one of those games which isn’t fancy or full of whizz-bang gizmos. It’s just solid, family maze moving fun. And everyone who plays it, regardless of age or experience, seems to get stuck in. 3D Labyrinth isn’t content with horizontal tile sliding, however. 3D Labyrinth wants to take you up as well as along in your journey to find magical and fantastical items!
Reach For The Sword
The gameplay in 3D Labyrinth is almost identical to the original but with a few twists. On your turn, you slide a piece into one of the sides of the board which shifts all the pieces in that row or column along by one. In doing so, the playing space is temporarily altered. You can then move your character as far along an unbroken path as you wish. Along the way there will be icons you pass over, and you are looking for specific ones (revealed in secret one at a time from your personal deck of item cards). The next player uses the piece pushed out of the maze to shift a different column/row and move their piece. Once you have collected your items, you are in a race back to your base in order to win the game.
So far so straightforward in a spatially challenging way. But 3D labyrinth introduces towers of up to 5 levels high. And whilst you are still pushing one tile in to maze and moving your character around, they are now facing a few more obstacles (literally!). You can’t pass through tower walls and you only have the ability to move up or down 1 level. Unless of course you have a spell card. These allow you to move up or down (or either if you get a wild one!) so that you can turn that tower into a mere hop on the way to collecting another item! And you get spell cards on any turn where you aren’t able to collect an item (or if you have passed over the mystic rune and flipped over your spell card!).
Final Thoughts
Having played the original for so long, introducing 3D towers and spell cards add interesting twists on the original. In some ways the 3D version feels more challenging as you are now thinking vertically as well as horizontally. However, the board itself is smaller than the OG, and the introduction of spell cards mean that we whizzed through a game in half the time the original usually takes us notwithstanding the towers.
Our almost 8 year old loves the 3D element. Pushing the towers in and out and hopping up and down to collect things on different levels gets big smiles. And he loved setting the board up first time (which thankfully sits in the box pre-constructed for future games). The components feel sturdy which is always good when games are aimed at a family audience. Plus, replayability comes in the tiles themselves which get randomly shuffled and allocated to the tops of the towers, as well as the random selection of item cards each player gets dealt at the beginning of the game.
Like the OG there’s fun to be had in moving the maze to block your opponents’ progress. And whilst it may feel like it is going to benefit you, remember that they will be moving the maze on their turn. And knowing you tried to stop them might just persuade them to throw off your plans to move next turn! I had a few turns where I was sandwiched between multiple towers unable to progress. And at that point it felt a little more restricted in terms of options than the OG. But eventually I was able to move myself onto a path thanks to some slidey tiley action and handy spells. I didn’t tread the path to victory, mind you. I took my eye off my husband’s deck of items and failed to notice he had collected his share. As such, he programmed a clear path back to his base and stole the win! Switching from item chasing to base blocking towards the end-game zone is a common strategy to all the Labyrinth versions. And whilst the towers do present additional obstacles to cross, the smaller board and smart use of spell cards evens up the odds. Overall, we enjoyed 3D Labyrinth and it works for a younger audience. Our OG will always be special to us, but I would happily play 3D Labyrinth again with our son.
