Amaze

AMAZE

Another puzzle I could solve during my short vacation on the "beautyful Island" is AMAZE which was designed and entered into the IPP competition 2004 by Eldon Vaughn. This maze game is produced by Thinkfun and still widely available for under 10 Euros on Ebay, Amazon or various internet shops.

The game board is - like the name suggests - a plastic maze with 4 moveable sliders and a kind of pen attached to it with a string. You have a "start" and "finish" and 16 different configurations of the sliders to prepare a challenge for you "driving" the pen from the starting point to the finish. In game you are allowed (and need) to move the wall positions in certain directions to make your way succeeding your task, however, sometimes the direction needed is not moveable from the point you are trying and new ways need to be discovered. From a difficulty rating point of view Puzzlemaster gave it a 8 out of 10 (demanding) whilst I think it should be more a 6 (tricky) or 7 out of 10 (challenging) and that only for very few slider configurations. Reason is that after fulfilling the first few challenges you know how the maze works and better find the right solutions. Therefore I could solve every configuration in minutes although it gets harder or say more complex.

If you like maze type games you should not hesitate and buy one copy. The same goes for those guys whose just start into puzzling or kids between 6 and 15. All other (besides collectors) can save their money and have a look at puzzles where you get more for the bucks.