I'm sorry, you have to be the blue key to read this review. No, wait, now be the green key — I mean, the red key. Oh, sorry, I drifted off there. You see, in Neon Maze, by Vitaliy Zlotskiy and Sergey Arseniev, things can get a bit crowded with all the colour switching and pattern memorizing. An up-front warning: Anyone with a colour-related eye issue will have difficulty with this game.
Playing equal parts as a maze, a hide-and-seek game and a guessing game, the idea is to run around a glowing labyrinth in your little mouse-controlled blur-pod while attempting to find the exit platform. Easy, just like a maze. Except that it's not. The neon-coloured walls and corridors do more than add decoration — they are a warning! Attempt to touch anything not the same colour as you and expect a sharp, shocking jolt and a reduction in bonus points.
To explore new sections of the maze, you will need to change your ship's colour. Touch a red gear to become red, and move effortlessly through red walls. Touch a blue gear for the same with blue walls — and expect the red walls to now be your enemy. As the levels advance, you will need to collect keys of the same colour as yourself, which then open new areas as the levels unfold around you. Each level uses this manipulation of boundaries to its own end, resulting in an expanding spiral of technical and involved level design, rather than a linear approach.
Analysis: Tossing in new surprises every now and then, such as locked doors, teleporters and one-way walls, does a lot to stretch the simplistic idea the game is built on. However, the large, similar-looking levels, which can only be viewed a section at a time, can cause disorientation as you move through them hunting for areas that have just become accessible. That said, the graphical presentation and the surprisingly intricate level design more than make up for any shortcomings. And at just 25 levels long, Neon Maze is the perfect length for a decent challenge.
Here's a tip: It looks like you can only pause by pressing the icon in the upper-right with your mouse, which is obviously stupid. But you can also pause by pressing [P].
it's a good game. the challenge level is just right. I'm taking a break after about half of the levels, but I'll most likely come back to it.
If it wasn't so slow with lag, it'd be better. Otherwise, this game's awesome.
Hm, on a couple of the levels, the last one especially, I seem to have left a few keys uncollected when I finished the level. Were these keys just superfluous? I wonder if it was on purpose or I defeated the game's logic through my random navigation.
Oh well, it was a good game that kept me playing to the end which is better than a lot of games can do.
My only complaint is the two levels which come down to using random teleporters until you happen to stumble upon the exit.
Excellent game. The atmosphere and the graphics are pretty great and go well together. It lags a bit sometimes, but not too badly. It's a pleasant puzzle game, but with a real-time aspect to it with the movement and the timer.
Currently on level 19; most levels so far aren't too difficult, but this one looks to be a toughie.
The teleporters always make me run into walls. :( Bad design.
A very nice, relaxing little game to play. I really liked the music.
As mentioned in the review, anyone with even basic anomalous trichromacy will have some trouble. It's too bad the (I'm assuming) green and yellow coloured bars, gears, etc are so similar. I couldn't tell the difference between the two whatsoever, so I had to rely on some guesswork when it came to choosing gears and going after keys. However, as I didn't care about bonus points, this didn't really bother me. As well, the shading of the bars of the selected colour was a definite plus. If the other colour-related aspects of the game (gears, keys, etc) were also shaded, there would be no problems for me.
I would suggest anyone with mild forms of colour blindness still give this game a try, as it's not too difficult to get past the colour problems.
Great game. Simple and addicting, without being too easy or too hard. My only gripe is that you can't select a level...
I really like this game! It's simplicity and challenge were refreshing.
I found a rather nifty bug though, that pretty much breaks the challenge of the game (unless you are aiming for a high score):
I made a small youtube video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DPtWCj0Sk
help help help!
fun, but stuck on level 23! so confused...
No option to adjust the color settings? :-( No fun for the colorblind.
Update