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The Magic Labyrinth vs Race to the Treasure

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When comparing The Magic Labyrinth vs Race to the Treasure, the Slant community recommends The Magic Labyrinth for most people. In the question“What are the best board games for kids?” The Magic Labyrinth is ranked 3rd while Race to the Treasure is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose The Magic Labyrinth is:

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.

Specs

# Players2 to 4

Age6+

Play Time15 Minutes

# Players1 to 4

Age5+

Play Time20 Minutes

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Common Questions

What are the best board games for kids?

The Magic Labyrinth

Race to the Treasure

Pros

Pro
Easy to play

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.

Pro
Teaches a good variety of concepts

Race to the Treasure introduces children to concepts such as making choices, prioritizing, and planning. Adults can guide kids to the best choices and explain them, which makes the game a good educational tool. There are many meaningful decisions to be made – where to place the tile, how to plan a route, picking between a key, an ogre snack, or the exit, etc.

Pro
Very easy

Race to the Treasure is extremely simple and can be taught in a matter of minutes to anyone. The mechanic is elementary – you draw a tile and place it. The tile can be either a path or an ogre. If it’s a path, then you decide where to connect it to the road you’re building. If it’s an ogre, then it’s added to the ogre track.

When you gather three keys and reach the exit, everyone wins. If the ogre reaches the exit first, you lose.

Pro
Quick to play

Race to the Treasure can take a maximum of 20 minutes, which is short enough for keeping the attention of younger players and not taking too much time for adults.

Pro
Fast to set up

Setting up the game is quick and easy. You place the board, shuffle the tiles, and then roll the two dice, one with a number and one with a letter, to determine where the keys and the ogre snacks are going to be placed on the 6x8 grid.

This also helps younger children with numbers and letters, so the setup can also be educational.

Ad
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.

Con
Luck-based

The tile deck contains 10 ogre tiles, if 7 of them are placed, then the players lose. Depending on where these tiles might be after the deck is shuffled, your game can often end with a quick loss or an easy win.

Con
Might require some house rules

There’s a gap in the rules for a situation where you draw a straight tile and the only space to place it goes off the board, which might require the introduction of a house rule to solve – re-drawing the tile, discarding it, adding an ogre tile, etc.