Maze Roller Demo

Most virtual reality games at the moment are pretty short and not very satisfying, mainly because the medium is still in the experimental stage. On top of that, it’s also pretty difficult to design something big in VR, given the fact that you have to account for anything extra. Speaking of which, the system requirements are through the roof as well, which shrinks the potential consumer market even more.

Maze Roller is a small puzzle game in which your goal is to navigate a series of mazes and help a poor rat make its way to its favorite treat. The game is designed to be enjoyed with anything from a keyboard to a motion controller, not to mention the fact that it also works with both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Thus, it should be a pretty fun experience if you are the happy owner of a VR headset.

On the other hand, the gameplay is what matters, regardless of how you choose to enjoy the game. In this regard, Maze Roller is a bit wonky, in the sense that it doesn’t impress with anything at first. You can enjoy three different game modes, depending on whether you want to move the actual sphere with the rat in it, tilt the whole table, or a combination of the two. The mazes change and get tougher later on, but everything else stays the same.

You can escape monotony by switching between the normal and the fantasy theme, although that only affects the visual appearance and just slightly some of the mechanics. Other than that, everything else is more or less the same, which is a bit of a bummer. Hence, the game suffers from VR syndrome, meaning that it lacks content and replayability.

Thankfully, at least it looks pretty decent, although not good enough to justify the high system requirements, even with VR support. There’s only the maze, the rat in the sphere and a couple of environmental objects around the table, and nothing is riddled with detail to explain the need for a powerful PC. On the other hand, it does use Unreal Engine 4, so the lighting and the soft shadows put quite the strain on your machine.

In the end, Maze Roller is not the VR savior we are waiting for, so you can delay your headset purchase for a while longer. Thus, the game is way too short and repetitive, not to mention the fact that it doesn’t really make any real use of virtual reality.