Mazes have a habit of making me feel like an idiot. I mean, I consider my self fairly intelligent…but put me into a hedge maze and you won’t see me again for another three years. Hell, just drop me off in the woods somewhere…my sense of direction is THAT bad. “Duel Maze” doesn’t make me feel like an idiot though…quite the contrary. It’s a two player game that tasks players with moving their dice to their colored goal markers and the first to three points, wins! Before we begin, I’d like to thank the folks at Player4 for providing me with a press copy for review purposes.
Duel Maze: 2 Players, Ages 12+, Average Play Time = 30-60 Minutes
Review
Editor’s Note: Rather than type out the components, game setup, and how the game plays here, I took the liberty of recording a video outlining most/all of the game’s features. It’s easier for me to do it this way as I have been very busy as of late both personally and professionally. You can find it at the bottom of this section.
I’m sure I’d get a few Picard face-palms if I claimed that “Duel Maze” was an a-MAZ-ing game, but that’s exactly what it is. There’s so much strategy for such an easy to play game, it’s ridiculous. There’s strategy in the setup when you’re building the shared maze as you can opt to concentrate on making your opponent’s life a living hell or opt to try and make your paths a bit less messy. Once you get past that part of it, you’ll have to regularly decide what values to assign to your dice as you’re spawning them. You CAN alter an existing die’s value by one on your turn, but that takes up a whole move.
Therein lies the heart of the game and by extension, it’s replayability. The maze will be different each time you play and on top of that, you never know what values your opponent will assign to their dice until he goes to spawn them. I found that I was often responding to what my opponent was doing…that is, spawning a five if they spawned a four just so that if they ever met on the field, my die would win out and theirs would be forced off the board. Then again, I could have easily spawned some ones in the hopes of going around his dice like Speedy Gonzalez. I just have to be careful not to get caught.
The gameplay is there, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. There is no box insert, though there rarely is with games I get from “The Game Crafter” from which this game is sold for $26.99 (as of 6/24/16). There’s also nothing on the box indicating the stats…that is, the number of players, the age requirement, the average play time, and etc. I included them in the picture’s caption above, in case you’re curious. Lastly, the board is a bit thin and flimsy. I think the quality could have been much better, though it serves its purpose regardless.
The cards serve as a nice way to mix things up when you least expect it. While not written in the manual, you COULD play without the cards to keep things less random and more like a game of “Chess” (except here, you don’t know what the pieces will be until they spawn). All in all, “Duel Maze” is highly accessible and an easy recommend to players looking to outsmart and outwit each other on the battlefield.
Final Verdict: 8/10
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Buy: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/duel-maze
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