Game Reviews

[Updated] Maze Lord review - A puzzler wrapped up in a dungeon crawler's armour

Star onStar onStar onStar halfStar off
|
iOS
| Maze Lord
Get
[Updated] Maze Lord review - A puzzler wrapped up in a dungeon crawler's armour
|
iOS
| Maze Lord

Updated on February 9th at 14:40: The original review we posted was of a pre-release build of Maze Lord. The review has been changed to reflect the game that people are actually playing. Apologies for any confusion.


Maze Lord is essentially a puzzle game wrapped up in fantasy trappings. Sure, you're working through a dungeon slashing up monsters, but really you're trying to balance survival and a move limit.

And it all works pretty well. There's a big chunk of levels to work through, and a lot of fun to be had.

A-maze-ing?

You're playing a flame-haired hero who's travelling through a series of locked rooms. You need to grab keys, kill bad guys, and nab some coins along the way.

But there's no real combat here. Enemies are essentially just modifiers. Hit one and, while they'll get out of your way, you'll lose one of your health points as well.

And since you've only got three health points to get you to the exit, that can pose a problem. You need to work out the path that's going to top up your health with potions while still getting you to the exit in time.

That means you're going to spend a good deal of time figuring things out. You need to stop on items to pick them up, so running over them is no good.

You tap to move, and it's best to take things one step at a time, otherwise you can miss vital items and have to head back for them. And that eats into the small number of moves you get for each challenge.

The game throws new obstacles in your way as you play, and figuring out how to get round them without becoming a gravestone is the key to success.

Lord above?

There's no IAP cloying at you to pay, and while there was an energy system in a pre-release build, that's been turfed out now as well.

All-in-all this is a fresh-ish take on the puzzling dungeon crawler that mashes its genres together in a pretty pleasing way.

[Updated] Maze Lord review - A puzzler wrapped up in a dungeon crawler's armour

Maze Lord has some nice ideas, and it's worth checking out if you like your puzzlers underground and full of skeletons
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.