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Andrew Butler
Australia
Hawker
ACT
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Space Maze
I Played Space Maze at Andrea's on the 1/2/12 in a two player game.
Time on the box was 45 minutes, It probably took us a bit over an hour, again rules checking as first play slowed us down.
Components/Quality.
This was one of my bargains of Cancon which I bought for half price as the box had a small ding/tear on the side. All the comments and pieces inside were in perfect condition thou. The maze square pieces were of a nice thick cardboard, and the spaceships which attach to the side of the maze were double thickness with a section removed so they sat on top of the board not just next to it which was a great feature. Cards were of an ok quality, maybe a bit thin or glossy not sure which one, but I had to keep checking to see that there wasn't too cards stuck together before I play them. There was 4 dice for each person playing, and they were of a good quality. But the real stand out feature of the game was the 3 custom shaped aliens for each player. Every player has a green, purple and orange alien, but the sculpts were different for each player. This for me really added to the game play for me, as I felt like they were actually competing aliens. The only downside is numerous times during the game I planned an epic move, and tried to complete it, before being told that it wasn't my alien I was trying to move. But that's probably just me, and in time I'll be able to distinguish the aliens apart better. The other cool component of the game was the crown, which is what you are trying to reach and return to your ship. This crown slots onto the head of the alien who has control over it, so its easy to see who has it at any one time, and also it looks cool.
Rules.
The rules were easy enough to understand. The one rule book had both rules in English and not English (German perhaps?) We had a little confusion with the card that allows you to move and extra space. Was it on top of your movement or separate? Thankfully there was a good example that dealt with just that in the book. In fact there has little examples all the way through the rules that explained important rule which made it easy to understand. The is a table in the back of the manual that explains what all the cards do which is very handy.
Game Play
The space maze is a 5 by 5 grid with the middle tile containing the crown that you are after. Each player starts an equal distance from this tile. After the first turn we both had aliens two tiles into the maze, and I thought to myself that there was no way that this game was going to take 45 minutes to play. However from that turn there was hi-jinx to be had. Things started getting strategic in the selection of dice to try and restrict the other player from potentially having anything useful to do, as playing the better cards requires a bigger die number to complete. Plus as the dice are coloured the same colours as the aliens, you need to ensure that you can get a good die for a particular alien otherwise there actions are greatly limited.
Downtime.
When it wasn't my go I was always playing ahead what my turn would be. There was a degree of having to change your plans when the tile you wanted to move to was moved itself, but I never felt that I was sitting there with nothing to do. I guess with 4 players rather than 2 there might be less incentive to plan your go in any great depth as to the changes to the board that can happy on everyone else's turn. But as you take turns in a choosing a die, there always seems to be something that you can do that conforms to your plan.
Would I play it again?
Sure would. Now that I've played it once I can see things that I would definitely do different, and perhaps plan more for the end game rather than playing so aggressively in the mid game. I would be very keen to have a 4 player game to see how that changes the game play.
Rating out of 10
I would give this a 7 out of 10. A solid game that I would happily play again anything someone asked.
Where would I place this against other games that I've played (currently only ones I've reported on, in this case Thunderstone)?
I really liked played Space Maze, but think I would place this under Thunderstone: Dragonspire as I enjoyed it more.
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