Maze Adventure (Piterayo)
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Maze Adventure (Piterayo)
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Maze Adventure is from a genre of games called 'dungeon crawlers' and in its case, the term couldn't be more appropriate. This is certainly a game that crawls along. If I was feeling particularly vicious I'd say it moves at the speed of a depressed lemming who can't find a bridge to jump from. And add that, after a few hours of playing it, I was that lemming...!

The screen is divided into a number of areas; your 3D view of the maze ahead takes up the largest part with level, health and compass indicators fairly intuitively placed. An overhead "teletext-style" map features below and scrolls in the appropriate direction as you take steps.

Perhaps the game's biggest failing is that, although it has copious instructions, it omits the singularly most important one of what you have to do. There are apparently 32 levels yet I never found my way off level one, despite hours of trying. I encountered rats and blobs, and manipulated the fiddly icon system when regular keyboard controls would have done just as well, but it felt pretty much futile when I didn't know what I was actually searching for.

It's a shame really, because the presentation, graphics and sound are extremely atmospheric. But, in my opinion, 3D maze games have never really had a lot going for them. Dressing them up doesn't disguise that.



Scores
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Graphics 68%
Sound 44%
Playability 20%
Lastability 4%
Overall 34%