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This is a comparison of the classic puzzle game that involves a wooden maze, a steel ball, holes in the floor, and the destination you must reach without having the ball fall into a hole. These games test your patience and coordination.
We’ll be looking at three games, to see which is the best one to buy and play. All three games utilize the accelerometer within the iPhone and iPod Touch to allow you to tilt and guide the ball around.
The three games are:
aMaze!
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- Rating:
aMaze! features 110 levels that you can play, and once you’ve unlocked one, you can go back and play it again anytime. Unlike with Labyrinth (talked about below) there’s no way to download freely available additional levels for the game. It is not know whether future updates will add more levels.
Compared to Labyrinth, aMaze! isn’t as good looking and polished. The wood looks faded and washed out compared to the vividness of Labyrinth. However, aMaze! has the best sound of all three games. The rolling of the ball sounds realistic, and the same can be said for when it hits the walls, or fall in a hole. If you’re using headphones or stereo speakers, you can detect the 3D separation when the ball rolls around on the left side of the screen, to the center, and then to the right. It’s a fantastic effect.
The controls are pretty good, although not as tight and responsive as Labyrinth. The difference is small, though. You can calibrate the device in the options for precise controls at most positions. Some levels have blue stars that you have to touch with your ball before the exit hole will open up. This adds an extra layer of challenge that’s a nice change of pace from the classic gameplay. Physics is tighter than Labyrinth, but again, it’s insignificant to not really be an issue.
BallBox
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- Price: $0.99
- Version: 1.0
- Developer: Olaf Schneider
Unlike the other two in this comparison, BallBox has a slightly different approach to the wooden maze game. Instead of guiding a single box through a maze to the end point, you guide multiple balls to the designated hole without letting any of them fall in any other hole. Some balls and holes are different colors; silver balls go in the silver hole, while green one goes in the green hole, and so on. There’s an Arcade mode and Riddle mode. Arcade is where you always start from level 1. Riddle lets you go to any level you’ve previously played, to play it again. Every level has a time limit in which you have to complete before it runs out.
The visuals are its weakest point, with most of the backgrounds just really horrible. The balls themselves are small and dull, barely looking like steel balls. The audio is sparse, although what’s there sounds pretty good. Sadly, there’s no rolling effect when the balls are rolling around on the board. This would go a long way towards making the game a more fun experience. When the wrong ball goes in the wrong hole, there’s a sound effect that is kind of funny, in a juvenile kind of way.
The physics is also different. Balls will bounce a long way off a wall, or clatter against each other realistically. Control is also very solid, and it has to be when you’re trying to manipulate more than one ball without having them fall in the wrong hole.
The biggest thing going for BallBox is its unique challenge and style of play. There are some light maze elements, and there are balls that have to avoid certain holes, but the gameplay is more wide-open and the multiple balls and physics make it stand out more.
[NOTE: BallBox is no longer available and has been removed from the Apple Store due to trademark issues.]
Labyrinth
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- Rating:
- Price: $6.99 (Get It – Free Demo)
- Version: 1.3.1
- Developer: Illusion Labs
We posted a review on Labyrinth back in July. Labyrinth was the first to come out featuring this kind of wooden maze puzzle. Of the three, Labyrinth looks the best. It also has the worst sound, with the rolling effect more annoying than realistic; fortunately you can turn the sound off. One of the best feature of Labyrinth, however, is the ability to download level packs for free and from within the game. There are easily over 500 levels to download and play, and more are being added all the time.
Physics is also well-modeled, with the ball having the right amount of weight and inertia when moving, bouncing off the walls and other objects, and you can even skim over a hole if the timing is right.
What makes Labyrinth stand out the most, is the solid and intuitive control. It just feels right, like a real wooden maze puzzle would be like. You hold your iPhone or iPod Touch parallel to the ground, and tilt it slight to guide the ball in the direction you want it to go. When the ball goes into a hole, and believe me, this will happen often, the iPhone will vibrate (this feature must be turned on in the settings.) To add an extra level of challenge, you can also enable, in the settings, the Time Limit to put a sense of urgency to your playing experience.
Unfortunately, a recent update made the main menu much slower than it needs to be. It has to wait for an advertisement/announcement to show up from the web before you can continue with any choices you made. Considering I had bought the game, I don’t see why I have to wait for an advertisement to show up to play the game.
Choosing the Winner
Which game is the ultimate wooden maze puzzle? To be fair, all three are pretty fun, and I have no problem having each one on my iPhone to enjoy. The best of the three is Labyrinth.
Labyrinth has intuitive and responsive controls, vivid visuals, realistic physic, and the ability to download hundreds of levels for free, the game belongs on every iPhone and iPod Touch. The developer needs to improve the sound, and get rid of the unresponsiveness in the main menu.
aMaze! is no slouch though, it is right there with Labyrinth in fun and its superior sound really draw you into the game. While 110 levels is a lot, it doesn’t hold a candle to the 500+ that Labyrinth offers. Although many of those levels can be of poor quality, while aMaze! has more consistency in the quality department.
BallBox, being the more unique of the three, suffers from terrible background textures. They were likely gotten from the hodgepodge of websites out there that offer free textures, with quality a backseat to quantity. However, the gameplay is still challenging and interesting enough to warrant a play through.
In order, the games would be:
The price of BallBox is now 0.99 cent