Developer: Wronghut
Publisher: Black Shell Media
Platforms: PC
Tested On: PC
Mazement – Review
We can all remember a time in our youth when we played with those little ball mazes that we might have got from a cereal box or something. It was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? Well, you don’t need to rely on nostalgia any longer, for Mazement is here to bring more excitement to a fairly mundane game!
Story
In the world of Shapearia, everything round and square lives in harmony. That is until a pyramid, who was mistreated in his youth, seeks revenge on anything round- and turns the cubes against the balls! The balls find themselves being locked in a magical tower, with no hope of escape. But wait! Who is this who has come to save them all? Well, it’s you of course! Your goal is to save your friends and defeat the evil jailor, but it won’t be easy- you need to outsmart all the cube minions, and navigate the levels of the prison to defeat the boss once and for all!
Though it is unusual to see an arcade game such as this having a storyline, it is fairly limited and short. There isn’t a large amount of narrative, save for the starting animation, something around the middle, and then after having beaten the jailor. There’s also a strange section after the main story, where you upset a witch and have to find the ingredients to her potion…all whilst having been turned into an egg, and then she helps you to turn back into a ball so you can complete more levels and defeat the pyramid. All in all, it doesn’t really make much sense, but given the style of game, it’s not all that important.
Graphics
Mazement employs a 3D style throughout, and the environments are nicely detailed. Each stage has its own flavour; for example, in the later levels with the witch, you’ll see little tables with potions lying around, and bookcases that make the place look more homely. A lot of care seems to have gone into making each level look different, which means that you don’t feel like you’re playing a recycled level over and over again.
The character design is also rather cute. The balls all have these silly little grins on their faces, and when you use the slow down feature on your character, it pulls the funniest face. The other characters, such as the witch and the cube minions, are all amusing too, and certainly make for a fun game.
Sound
The music in Mazement isn’t bad at all. The starting theme is fairly epic, and does make one think of a daring castle rescue mission. The level music, which changes depending on which stage you’re on, is also a nice underscore to the action. The earlier stages have quite peppy, but thoughtful music; later on, the music whilst getting the ingredients for the witch is fairly creepy and almost not there, and it changes again afterwards. In short, you won’t get bored of the soundtrack as it varies quite a lot.
Gameplay
Mazement is a physics-based ball rolling 3D puzzle platformer, which can either be played with mouse and keyboard or games controller (we played with the former, although we would possibly recommend playing with the latter). To tilt the board, you can either use mouse movement, or the directional arrows on a keyboard- but beware not to tilt too far, as the ball will end up going too fast and you’ll soon lose control! You can use the left mouse button to slow the ball down to a halt, and continue holding it down to make the ball travel more slowly and cautiously around corners, or obstacles such as spikes that will make you burst the moment you hit them. You can use the right mouse button or spacebar to jump, depending on your preference. You can also use either the middle mouse button or Left ALT to use your powerup when needed, and scroll through the available ones with the mouse wheel- but make sure you can still keep control of the ball during these moments, as the ball does tend to go haywire sometimes. This is probably one of the more difficult aspects of the game, but you can master it soon enough.
Throughout the levels, there are two side objectives (besides getting to the end of the level, of course). One of these is to save as many of your ball friends by bashing their cages down as you roll at them at speed. The other is to collect as many coins as you can. Whilst these can affect how many stars you can get for the level, there’s nothing to say that you have to collect the coins or save the other balls at all. Perhaps it might have been better to have a greater penalty for not achieving these two objectives rather than just not being able to get full marks. You are also timed during the levels, but unless you care deeply about leaderboards, how long you take doesn’t matter either- just as long as you complete the level. Once you complete the main storyline, this changes slightly as you are getting specific objects rather than just getting to the end.
The levels themselves get progressively difficult as you keep going, and they are sometimes highly irritating. There will be many moments where you will fail on the same part over and over, getting more and more frustrated until that shining moment where you finally break through- and then you fall at the next hurdle. However, they aren’t impossible, and provide enough of a challenge to test you, but hopefully not to break you. If you find it too hard, there is the option of altering the controls so that you move the ball instead of the board…but where’s the fun in that?!
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Mazement is a frustratingly fun game. Sure, you might rage quit on occasion when the ball doesn’t roll quite the way you want it to, but this title certainly provides hours of entertainment as you try to get the quickest time you can. Whilst the storyline may not necessarily fit with the action, you can bet that the graphics, music and gameplay more than make up for what’s missing.
Mazement - Review,
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