eMazing Mazes

The Good
There's a lot more here that I was expecting.

First the picture puzzles. While these have limited replay value they are well done. I like the idea that at each node or junction the game waits for the player to input a direction and then it draws in the completed path through to the next node/junction. I've played similar games where every part of the path has either to be traced with the mouse or navigated with the keyboard and this is definitely the best method for playing games of this type.

The Marble Maze was a surprise, I was not expecting over one hundred levels. I played a couple and struggled a bit and whether the remainder would get a bit samey is something I can't answer. They were different and interesting but just not for me. The mechanics of the game though were flawless.

The Magic Max game is, again, flawless and at one hundred levels it was another surprise but it's an old idea that I didn't like back in the eighties and it's still not a genre that engages me.

The Bad
The menu system. At the top level there's eGames bespoke menu and below that there's an eBrainyGames menu. That felt clumsy. Also each of the 2D mazes is a separate program and my firewall kept throwing up messages asking did I really want to run this program, a minor irritation but one I could have done without

Some puzzles just would not run. Now this game is twelve/thirteen years old but I'd expect it to work in one of my machine environments. None of the 3D mazes would run under Win 7, Win XP, Win XP using machine emulation, or on a Win98 virtual machine. A little digging suggests that this is down to the use of an old Quake engine and somewhere along the line I got a message about OpenGL being needed but after an hour of fiddling I gave up

The Bottom Line
The bits that work are fine, they are not my cup of tea but they work and they are well done. If you like mazes, especially the Marble Maze or Magic Max variety, then this will probably be of interest