Normally I’m against silent games, but I think that works to its advantage here, as it forces an almost-tactile form of wordless communication between the players. The game's brilliance is delivered through one simple rule; You can’t talk or communicate in anyway other than using the “Do Something Pawn. Players really do have to work together to move through the maze and to spot the twists and turns where travel will be difficult.

In this game players take on the actions available to four heroes who are trying to steal new weapons from a nearby mall and escape with them.Nobody can do everything, even in the solo game – you’ve all got to work together to make this happen while the sandtimer trickles an ever increasing multitude of grains of sand into the unforgiving bulb at the bottom. Not like any other game I’ve played before, it’s really good fun and gets you thinking and playing in a new way. Because all players have to be able to reach the maze, finding places for players to sit can be challenging. When I look at the game bereft of that central concept thought I don’t see something that’s much worth playing. You might be focused on the theft, others on the logistics of revealing greater amounts of the stack.

A pawn is moved and then everyone goes silent and starts acting contrary to what everyone else thought had been agreed. Don’t get too used to this though – whenever the hourglass flips over, you’ll trade these off to another player like the world’s most frustrating game of pass the parcel. Some mention that the single player mode is really fun, and that it' s a great tile laying co-op game. Take that as you will but consider that I have a cyanide capsule installed in one of my back molars as a safeguard against someone bringing Settlers around to game night.You’d think it would be easy to tell what another player thinks you should do, but it isn’t, especially if you are at odds in your plans for what needs to happen on the board. To begin a game of Magic Maze, all players will get a tile that will tell them the actions they can take throughout the game. Simply check the number in the bottom corner of each tile, starting with scenario’s 1-7 for the beginners (initiation) campaign, shuffle them and place them face-down. Magic Maze would be fairly easy if communication were allowed to flow freely or if players had all night to solve the puzzle. The timer provides another fun wrinkle to the game: players are allowed to talk freely whenever the timer is flipped.

I played with someone who had recently had foot surgery; we tried to fill in some gaps for him, but it was difficult for him to be as involved as some of the other players. Sure there are sandtimers on the board which allow you to turn the timer, but that’s it and if the sand runs out it’s game over. Your goal is to get all four characters to their special equipment spaces, then get them out of the mall through the exits. As you can see in the photo, each Action tile has a set of numbers in the bottom-right corner; these numbers indicate which player counts you use that tile for. It seems like I’m waiting for the one game that melts away my cold outer shell and replaces it with a warm sense of love and wonderment.Making the labyrinth is satisfying, and it is a new challenge each time because the tiles come out randomly. Maybe you place the piece with a bit of force if you want them to do something they should have done 30 seconds ago. It’s a pretty neat little game really, it takes next to know time to set up and about 5-10 minutes for a play through. You get to talk and laugh about the successes and failures because they reveal something of you as a person and something of your relationship with the spymaster/spymistress. Hanabi, Hive, Love Letter, and more have all come under criticism for greater or lesser offences against our sensibilities.