The Magic Labyrinth is a memory game for 2 to 4 players. The players are wizard’s apprentices that are trying to gather magic items that they lost in the wizard’s maze, but there’s a catch – the maze is full of invisible walls and the objects are revealed one at a time. The first player to gather five items wins.
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Pros
Pro Easy to play
The game is extremely straightforward and can be explained to absolutely anyone – you choose a pawn, roll a die. and try to reach the cardboard token on the gameboard before your opponent does. It’s not as easy as it seems though, there’s an invisible maze under the playing space, so you must use your memory to remember the paths. If the magnetic ball following your pawn under the gameboard hits a wall, then you return to the start and try again on your next turn. The first player to gather five tokens wins.
Pro Variable play time
Though The Magic Labyrinth is already quite a quick game that takes 20 minutes at most, if you want to play an even shorter game, then you can reduce the win condition to a smaller amount of required tokens by removing some from the cloth bag.
Pro Variable difficulty
You can manipulate the maze under the gameboard and remove as many wooden pieces as you see fit to adjust the game’s difficulty level. The game comes with 24 walls, but the number you use in your maze is up to you, the only rule being that all spaces on the gameboard must be accessible from at least one side.
Pro Great component quality
The Magic Labyrinth’s components are very well-made. The game consists of a multilayered board that has a grid on the bottom and an overlay on the top. The grid on the bottom side of the gameboard is filled with little wooden pieces that make up the maze.
The game is played with magnets – the pawns on the top of the gameboard are magnetically attached to a small ball under the gameboard. The magnets are powerful, and the pieces don’t accidentally come apart. The wooden pawns feel great to the touch and are easy to slide around.
Additionally, the game has a nice cloth bag with all the magic item tokens. The tokens are made of thick cardboard.
Cons
Con Token spawn is luck-based
The tokens that are required to win the game are placed one at a time and they’re drawn from the cloth bag. The token can be closer and easier to reach to one player as opposed to someone else. A player could even get lucky and have a token spawn on the space they’re on, which leads to them instantly getting it. This issue is especially prevalent in games with more players.
Con No simple way to move past other players
There can be a situation where a player must move past another player by going through their space. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult task because of the thickness of the pawns and the magnets underneath. Shimmying past someone could make a player accidentally reveal whether the space next to them is a wall or not.
Con Can get samey after a while
The Magic Labyrinth can lose its replay value after a few plays because it’s very straightforward and doesn’t introduce any new variables.
Con Tedious to set up
The game requires a maze to be built underneath the gameboard by placing wooden pieces in the grid before you begin, which can be annoying because it takes a while and the player who set it up could have a small advantage even if the gameboard is spun a few times before placing the overlay. There is one rule – each token must be reachable. Setting up the maze could also be difficult for children.
Con Three-player mode has its disadvantages
When playing with three players, the player whose starting space is in the middle of the other two players has a handicap. This is because this player is further away from the empty corner. If a token spawns near that side, then the other two players are much closer to it by default.