aMAZEing 3D Maze & Treasure Hunt

Expectations can make a bad game seem decent and a good game seem bad. They can't, however, make a game where there's none at all. To expect aMAZEing to deliver satisfying gameplay is to set yourself up for disappointment.

Rather than an exciting spatial adventure, it's nothing more than a buggy tech demo that's amazingly devoid of substance.

aMAZEing sets you inside a randomly generated three-dimensional labyrinth with the objective being to find your way out.

Before starting on your way, the game lets you choose the number of room in the maze (between 3 and 50). Additionally, you can set the number of collectible gems hidden throughout the level. Finishing a maze is a matter of finding the exit and nabbing all of the gems.

These randomly generated maps can be quite complex and if there were a few enemies to shoot, stalk and be stalked by, aMAZEing would represent the beginnings of a decent enough adventure game.

Instead, you're left to traipse about in search for an exit with only the amusing sound effect of collecting a gem accompanying you.

Ironically, aMAZEing equips you with a mini-map that outlines your current position within the maze, as well as other important locations.

This completely destroys the challenge of charting a way to the exit because you're told exactly where it is. As a result, the only real objective is to collect the diamonds littering the maze; unsurprisingly, this rote errand is hardly fun.

The controls are reasonably good, with a D-pad under the left thumb and a camera control under the right. Too often though, your thumbs either stray from the controller or you’re constantly washing it to get the view you want.

When you want to look around a room fully it’s a case of pushing the camera control around clumsily as you fight your vision into position. At least the graphics perform admirably and there's no slowdown or glitching of any sort.

Such difficulties are unlikely, however, since the mazes are rudimentary, repetitive, and bear no adornment whatsoever. This makes exploration tedious, as there are no sights to see and no way to fathom where you are in the game without spending more time watching the mini-map in the top right corner.

That said, I did experience an anomaly whereby the exit was in a section of corridor that had no connection to the rest of the maze - I could see it on the mini-map, but there was no way to access it. Considering there’s also no way to exit a level either, switching the game off was the only real option.

Frankly, it's an option you may end up considering when the alternative is slogging through what amounts to a tech demo than a substantive game. aMAZEing reiterates a well-established point: 3D graphics are possible on iPhone.

Just because it can push polygons, though, doesn't mean you can expect am amazing game.