Speed Mazing Review

Game: Speed Mazing
Genre: Action, Party
System: Steam ( Windows)
Developer|Publisher: Piotr Zurek, Lukasz Leszczuk | Infinite Dreams
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US Everyone
Price:  UK £7.19 | US $9.99 | € 8,19
Release Date: October 21st, 2021

Review code provided with many thanks to Infinite Dreams

Speed Mazing is a racing party for up to four players. Another party game to share with the family young, old and of all gaming skill levels. This game is definitely accessible for all audiences but is that enough to make this title a worthwhile purchase? Let’s put on those running shoes and find out. 

Speeding to The Finish

When you start a map in the game each of the players’ present needs to run to their designated colour icon. Once everyone is in place the tiles of the map will break and change. A path will be created for each player to head towards a green glowing tile. The player that reaches the tile first wins a point. Then the process repeats until the player with ten points wins the match. 

Accessible Controls

The controls are as simple and accessible as they can be for all audiences. Using just the analogue stick on the controller you simply move your character as best you can to the goal. If you fall into a spike pit you instantly restart back at your starting title whilst also leaving a rather humorous skeleton corpse in the pit where you fell. 

The game appears to be designed to be played with four human players. But if you can’t make up the numbers you can fill the empty slots with bots who play pretty well in this game. The game does offer multiple handicaps per player I guess to make the game specifically more difficult for them but I struggled to notice the difference when playing with the different settings here. 

Content

There are five themed maps to play in each section with a remixed variant, mostly of the tomb variety. One map offers a little variation by enshrouding the map in fog making it harder to navigate your route. Other than that there isn’t anything to make these maps stand out, all of them will display the same random routes to the goal and the formula gets old pretty quick. There are no power-ups, just run to the finish. Bizarrely, the maps reduce down to a mere three in multiplayer, which makes very little sense considering the appeal to some may be to play this game with four players. 

The game does offer a single-player mode which sees you move your character across a long-form map trying to reach the goal as soon as possible collecting as many green tiles on the way to award you a time bonus at the end. This served as a short but fun distraction but I was kinda left confused why this could not also be played in multiplayer. This long-form scrolling level design actually felt a bit more appealing than the single screen levels of the versus mode. 

Looks

Graphically the game is a standard 3D affair. Decent colour and character models in games but not really a lot to write home about. There are only four characters to select from on the select screen whose images display a rather uncomfortable case of dead eyes. As the levels play there is also a jolly jingle that’s pretty well suited to the party game feel. 

Conclusion – Over In a Flash 

I admire Speed Mazing designing their game to be suited to all audiences. But unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend this game based on what little content it has to offer in its current state. The game really could do with more variety and depth in its gameplay. I can see the logic in playing this with a youngling but I can’t see this title lasting more than a few game nights at best in terms of attention span. I don’t like to bring up the price much in games but it is hard to ignore that many other games offer more at a much lower price. The developers’ hearts are clearly in the right place but this is a game you’ll speedily forget.

If you are curious try the game free demo available on Steam to see what you think.

Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure