REVIEW | Maze Blaze

LifeisXbox’s Maze Blaze review | We’ve all had a dream where we were stuck in a maze, right? or at least imagined it. Now, imagine if hostile robots were scattered around the maze with you, it would be scary if only you didn’t have Warhammer-like armour and a gun with unlimited ammo. Add neon colours and a futuristic place and you’ve got yourself the premise of Maze Blaze. Who put you in that maze? Revulo Games, they also published it.

Most Memorable Moment

Seeing a bunch of different special ammo combined felt like a fireworks show, it was the most surprising and satisfying moment I had in Maze Blaze.

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Easy to play | The first thing you’ll see after pressing the A button on the main menu is a tutorial with images and text teaching you how to play. There are a few pages, but it’s nothing too complicated. You can walk with the left analogue stick, run with B (it only drains your stamina if you’re in combat), shoot with RT, and finally lock your character in place with LT so you can aim with the left analogue stick and dash with B. The goal is to reach the exit, which will lead you to the next floor. Nothing complicated, right? Yep, no tricks or catches here, it’s that simple, except that you will have enemies in your path.

• Items and artefacts | Maze Blaze is a fairly straightforward game to play, but there are a few elements that add difficulty and diversity. For instance, you can find items and consumables that will help you in battles like grenades, shields, and healing supplies. Various special ammo types are also available, each with a unique effect. While I didn’t find out what each one did, I did figure out what some of them did. There are ricocheting shots, ones that stun targets, ones that penetrate walls (albeit they appear to deal less damage when they do so), and homing shots. Additionally scattered throughout the maze are artefacts that will offer you choices that could have a favourable and/or negative outcome. Quantum dies can also be used to randomise an artefact.

• What does that mean? | The maze contains some areas with symbols and colours combined that will have various consequences. One is very obvious; it’s a blazing emblem in red colour, and yes, standing still in it does set you on fire. One of these is purple and has an arrow pointing up with a line that turns into an arrow pointing down with the same line. One of them makes you move quicker, while the other makes you move slower. Grey tiles with a crossed eye will significantly reduce your field of vision. You’ll be healed by a green cross. There will be a zone with a sliding floor, with a white snowflake. Both a skull and a caution sign were related to the colour green, but I couldn’t figure out what they stood for because I wasn’t hurt by either.

• Is this The Grid? | If like me, you’re a fan of Tron: Legacy, you’ll feel like this is The Grid, the digital world where Tron lives. While the enemies and player models don’t have the same aesthetic Tron’s characters do, the world of Blaze Maze resembles The Grid quite a bit. It has the same kind of mix of a dark environment with neon colours as in Tron: Legacy, except there are more neon colours here than in the ones you’ve seen in Tron.

• Extra content | Maze Blaze has more to offer than just the standard adventure mode, in which you advance through floors to a final destination. There is an endless mode that, in case it wasn’t clear, never ends. You can play the endless mode or the adventure mode either by yourself or with a friend. Unfortunately, I had no one to play together with.

Mixed Feelings

• Cool but nauseating | The sole intent of this topic is to discuss a very specific effect that the game has that some players might find uncomfortable to witness. As you move through the maze, you’ll notice that the parts of the maze that you can’t see right now or yet will gradually reveal themselves or be hidden. We’re talking about a lot of cubes expanding and contracting simultaneously, and when I looked at them straight, it slightly confused my head. Remember that I’ve reviewed and played Circa Infinity, which ought to have made me lose my mind far more, but for some reason didn’t, while this simple effect did. Therefore, if this effect bothers you, you should probably avoid playing Maze Blaze or, at the very least, concentrate on the centre of the screen, as I did.

• Good repetitive beats | While it’s undeniable that Maze Blaze‘s soundtrack sounds good, it’s also undeniable that it will feel repetitive pretty quickly. Each floor has at least one electronic song playing in the background, and it sounds good. Since this is a roguelike, you’ll most likely be revisiting the same floors many times, as I did, and that makes the soundtrack feel not as good as it would if you didn’t revisit them.

What we Disliked

• Nothing | This is a rare case of a review that only has content in the “What we Liked” and the “Mixed Feelings” sections, my reviews usually don’t have a “Mixed Feelings” section when they don’t have content in all sections.

How long to beat the story | At least 1 hour to finish a run (I wasn’t able to finish one)
How long to achieve 1000G | 6+ hours

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