The word maze is a team game with the ultimate goal of guessing passwords. There are at least four participants in the game. In each team, we designate a person who describes the word on the card in a given round. Meanwhile, the rest of the group tries to guess them. He must do this before the sand in the hourglass runs off. Of course, the developers took care of a few difficulties and variations, thanks to which the gameplay is more interesting and original.
Aesthetic and solid edition
A charming illustration on the box, depicting daredevils traversing the corridors of the title maze, catches the eye. The graphic design of the game is consistent. The Polish edition, prepared by the Rebel publishing house, looks really solid and aesthetic. A nice touch is adding cards to write down words, two pencils and … a sharpener to the set. I was very positively surprised by the simplification of the instructions. The cardboard box includes a summary, the reading of which allows you to quickly start playing without the tedious reading of a detailed description of the rules. Of course, there was also a standard booklet containing answers to probably all questions and doubts that could arise during the game. I suppose the Word Labyrinth has gone through a solid testing phase as no understatements have been left.
Game rules
The rules of the Word Labyrinth are similar to the Taboo . Both games involve avoiding forbidden words while giving directions to each other. However, in the Labyrinth… the challenge is much more difficult for two reasons. First, the opposing team comes up with the trap words. Second, the person describing the password does not know these words and has to think hard to avoid words that the opponents could potentially write on their paper. In addition, guessers have a limited number of tries and cannot consult each other.
To further diversify the gameplay, additional obstacles appear in subsequent rounds. The team pawns move on the tiles that make up the board-corridor. In subsequent “chambers”, each team must avoid more forbidden words and be careful of curses that make it difficult to describe and guess. Some of them are really problematic, for example, one forces us to give all the prompts on one exhalation, while another reduces the number of attempts. There is also one that forces the group to cross out one of the trap words, which makes it easier for the opposing team.
Before starting the game, we randomly select one of the five creatures that we place at the end of the maze. It moves towards the pawns when the teams fail to guess any word in the queue. Each masquerade can have one of two powers that work much like curses. The goal of the game is to get to the monster and defeat it by decrypting the password. The game may end with one team winning, with both teams, or the monster winning if the players fail to defeat him in eight rounds. This solution of the creators prevents the game from dragging on and the participants are not bored. One batch, according to the information on the box, takes about half an hour.
Replayable and scalable
It is worth paying attention to the high replayability that characterizes this game. Each card contains several words, which means that we will not come across the same password twice. Additionally, the authors devised an interesting mechanism for randomizing words. The card is inserted into one of the special “books” with a window, so you can only see one password. In turn, coming up with words-traps for opponents, curses and monsters make the game variants in fact endless.
The creators also took care of the scalability of the Word Labyrinth . In addition to the variant without curses for beginners (and the possibility of adding more curses for advanced players), they equipped the game with a few additional board tiles with different numbers. This solution allows you to choose the number of trap words according to the level of the players.
Fantastic party game
The fantastic elements in the game do not only come down to the graphics and names. The aforementioned “books” come in two variants – general and fantasy. In the latter version, the box only shows words more or less related to this genre. It is an interesting idea that allows you to play thematic games.
It might seem that it is impossible to come up with a competitive alternative to the popular word puns, but the Labyrinth of Words proves that you can always change something for the better and diversify the proven formula. The Czech game is more interesting than similar titles and is not recombined. It is characterized by considerable replayability and allows you to freely increase the level of difficulty and choose between the “universal” and “geeky” variant. Thanks to these advantages, the Labyrinth of words will not get bored quickly and will add splendor to many events.
We would like to thank the Rebel publishing house for submitting the game for review .
