By Drew Wilson
MazeMaker is a computer generated maze making puzzle game. While this sounds very generic, keep in mind that the mazes generated have multiple floors.
This particular game was released in 1992 (as per the about portion of the game). This particular game is a bit more obscure than some of the other games I’ve reviewed.
Gamers are treated to the standard Splash screen (as seen in the image I’ve used above, only much bigger). From there, gamers see the program randomly generate the maze. At this stage, there is very brief, yet useful instructions on how to beat the game.
You start in the northwest corner of the maze. Your goal is to get to the crudely drawn dollar sign on the south east corner of the maze. Your mouse is somewhat restricted to your location and cannot go over walls. Your character is really just a modified mouse that leaves “bread crumbs” as you travel and explore the maze.
Throughout all of the multi-floor mazes are arrows. If you go up to the arrow, you’ll move up a floor. If you encounter a down arrow, you’ll go down a floor. If you encounter an arrow that points in either direction, you just click on the arrowhead that points to the direction you want to go.
You’ll have an indicator telling you what floor you are on. You’ll also have a timer. This serves as a way to score your performance. The faster you complete a maze, the better your score. Completing the maze will put you to a window that allows you to insert your name into a hall of fame. Sadly, when I recently attempted to run this via emulation (DOSBox/Windows 3.x), the game made Windows freeze upon completion of the maze. So, sadly, I’m not aware of a way to actually make this game fully functional.
There are many different kinds of mazes this game can generate. There’s the default “Maze of the Day” which randomly generates a 4 floor maze and names it after the day it was generated on. There’s also an “EASY Maze of the Day” which does the same and cuts the floors in half. There’s a few other options, but the most interesting feature is the ability to create a custom maze. You simply insert the dimensions and number of floors. You can also choose to show or hide breadcrumbs which can add an extra layer of challenge to your gaming experience.
If you want to do something mid way through your maze exploration experience, you just move the mouse very quickly out of the maze. This will cause your cursor into a plus sign. It can be restored by simply moving your mouse over where you last left the map and you can continue on your way.
Graphically, this was not a great game in that respect. All of the art looks like it was created with MSPaint. I think even making the dollar sign with a standard ASCII dollar sign would have been an improvement over what was created as a sort of finish area. The cursor was a little interesting, but everything else was crude.
There is no audio for this game, so I can’t judge this game based on audio.
Overall, this was an interesting little distraction much like solitaire or Minesweeper. I kind of wished that this would be some sort of default game included with Windows releases as it would fit in nicely. This game is one of those games you can infrequently play from time to time whenever you need a short 15 minute break from something else. If the graphics were to be improved today with faded versions of the other floors for instance, this game could really be improved and made in to a decent game for casual PC gamers. So, generally, it was an OK game with an interesting idea thrown in. Not exactly something to get overly excited over.
Overall
Furthest point in game: No such thing as a “furthest point” as everything is randomly generated, but I have completed a maze of the day and an EASY maze of the day. Not that this really means much in this particular game.
General gameplay: 16/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 1/10
Audio: N/A
Overall rating: 53%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85
