#comments

UPDATED Wed Sep 3 08:59:26 EDT 2008: Just added in aMaze! to the review. Also Labyrinth has been updated to version 1.3 with a couple new features (sound, level pack management), nothing really changes in terms of this review, though.

Quick comparison of three navigate the marble through a maze of walls and holes games, Labyrinth, Marble Mash and aMaze!. Fortunately, they all have a free version – Marble Mash Lite, Labyrinth Lite and aMaze! Lite. (see also my previous review of Labyrinth and some other games)

Fundamentally these games are very, very similar. They all feature a shiny marble that you tilt your iPhone (or iTouch) to navigate around a flat maze of walls and holes. You probably wouldn’t think there are too many differences and there aren’t, but there are a few that make me favour Labyrinth significantly over Marble Maze and aMaze!, although it isn’t to say that there aren’t things that Labyrinth could pick up.

The most obvious difference is the look, Labyrinth features a classic wood grain look for the maze. It looks, more or less, like those old school marble games that you had the two knobs to tilt the maze. aMaze! sticks with a nice, low key wood theme as well. Marble Mash, on the other hand, looks crazy with crazy metallic gradient walls and garish weird images over space themed background. In case it wasn’t obvious, I much, much, much prefer the wood background – other than the fact that I hate the MM backgrounds aesthetically, I also find them mildly distracting on some harder levels.

In terms of game play, Labyrinth provides a much smoother game, the ball rolls smoothly and you rarely notice any jerkiness in the game. MM’s is much less so – compared to Labyrinth the motion is very jerky. Also, Labyrinth seems to have a much finer (a technical judgement, not a value one) use of the accelerometer – as you play you tilt the device in tiny, tiny increments to get the reaction you want. MM uses much broader movements. An odd observation, but I also think the ball is smaller in MM. Overall, I found the tough boards on Labyrinth significantly more challenging than the hardest on MM. This may, prove biased, though, since I have the paid version of Labyrinth and only the free of MM so obviously have access to many more levels.

In my experience, aMaze, like MM, was not very smooth. The movement was very jerky and it made some of the tighter levels a good bit more difficult as the ball would stick and then roll very quickly as you overcompensated. The controls are much broader – more similar to Marble Mash than Labyrinth’s fine grain controls.

A couple interesting things that MM provides is different sized holes. In Labyrinth, the holes are all the same size where as MM seems to have a few different sizes. I think this can provide for a wider variety of board configurations and I hope Labyrinth decides to allow this in an update. Also, interestingly, MM provides a scoring mechanism with a final score for a set of boards and a high score tally.

aMaze! also provides different sized holes, rounded walls which is pretty cool and with a twist that didn’t (in the demo levels at least) but could definitely add a new dimension to the game play, they also provide optional stars that you have to roll over before you can finish the board.

Labyrinth is easily the least developed in terms of these additional bits. It only tells you your time per board without maintaining any history or providing a final score for all the levels. I’d love to see, at least, a list of the top times for each board – that would be great! An internet based list would be the cat’s meow. And some of these other features, round walls, different sized holes, stars to pick up – these would all be welcome additions to some boards. It’d allow for much more variety of play.

Despite the limited board options, I still believe that Labyrinth will win in terms of board diversity. Since it allows anyone to create new boards you get a community based level system which should provide a wide variety of board types. The game has a built in level downloader which gives you a list of all the level packs and a convenient “download all button”. I wish they would create a forum around these boards, but so far they haven’t really tried to enhance the community. Marble Mash takes a more traditional buy the game get 500 levels all at once. Presumably more levels can be made available to you with updates. I prefer the Labyrinth version, decoupling the game from it’s levels and the more options for creative boards that having an open system create. aMaze! doesn’t mention anything about levels, but I assume its model is like Marble Mash’s where all levels come with the updates.

I definitively prefer Labyrinth to Marble Mash. aMaze! is a strong contender as well, but until they work out the smoothness Labyrinth is still the one. No question in my mind. But the beauty of it is that since they both have free versions you can painlessly try them both out and then by the full version of the one you prefer. Love to know what you think!