A review by Adam Perry
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The Castle Paradox game list often receives new entries that go completely unnoticed. The luckier ones manage to bubble up onto the "most downloaded" list for the following week, but some games are relegated to ignominy.
Not Fatal Maze. This was quickly the most-discussed game for the week following its unexpected release. Its author, Rya Riesender, has made a name for himself, for better or worse, and his opponents were among the more vocal contributors to the discussion. Reading it, you'd think Fatal Maze were the harbinger of the apocalypse or worse.
I'll be the first to say that Rya has expressed some extremely odd opinions on game design. I'd even be inclined to say that I disagree with him on most of his points -- except that I've played and beaten Fatal Maze myself and it's actually not bad.
Don't get me wrong, it's not contending for Game of the Year, unless it's by default. But anyone who hates this game with the passion I saw on CP clearly isn't giving the game a fair pass: it's well-designed and short enough to hold your attention. What I'm trying to say is that there are things worth checking out here.
The game is light on explanation. Actually, that's an understatement. There's no hint at what you're supposed to be doing here. This is a little off-putting; I can live without a strong story in a game like this -- instinctively, you'll understand that a game called Fatal Maze will require you to traverse said maze -- but the gameplay is not as self-explanatory, and you won't survive long if you don't understand how the "pickup" system works. It's a clever system and the foundation of the game: every kind of enemy carries a different item, which you can steal from them instead of attacking on a given round. These items can be consumed in battle to provide different effects, from increasing your attack power to attacking directly. An enemy can be stolen from repeatedly, allowing you to stock up on the items.
The gameplay degrades once you've gotten a full collection of items. Leveling up is a fantastic way to restore your HP early on -- in fact, the game feels like it would be more balanced without the abundant healing potions -- but the marginal benefit decreases and later on there's less pressure to fight the battles. Fortunately, about the same time you stop seeing enemies with exciting new toys, the game also reaches its conclusion, so this isn't a big deal. The final stretch of the game requires you to make intelligent use of the items you've collected. The last boss is either very challenging or, well, not, depending entirely on how many full-heal potions you've collected. This isn't as big a problem as it might sound, as you need to fight some of the game's more difficult battles in order to get those potions.
The graphics are a mixed bag: the out-of-battle graphics are pleasant, and while they repeat with different color schemes on each level of the dungeon, the game is short enough that it doesn't wear on you. The in-battle graphics vary from awful to good, displayed on a black background. Could be worse. More grating than anything you'll see is the music: most of the tracks have a delay of a few seconds before they start playing, so if you run from your battles, you might go a full minute without hearing anything. The track selection is good -- I don't recognize the songs, but I'm pretty sure they're by Motoi Sakuraba -- if a little sparse. More variety wouldn't have hurt here.
Perhaps the biggest complaints I have with this game are the severely disappointing ending (a single "thanks for playing" textbox) and the fundamental gameplay of wandering around in a maze. I understand the necessity of a dungeon to wander around in, but mazes are never much fun. Even simple additions like keys or switches would have made the wandering more interesting.
However, the low points of the game aren't low enough to keep me from recommending this game. From start to finish, it's only about half an hour; admittedly not the best half hour you'll ever have on the OHR, but you could also do a lot worse than Fatal Maze.
