MAZES OF OGGLAR Demo

Although the shooting is what comes to mind when you think of classics like Doom, Wolfenstein or Heretic, there were other elements that made the games so memorable. Hence, the story and the atmosphere had a lot to do with it as well, and the level design was way ahead of its time as well. Finding your way around narrow corridors was a challenge in itself, let alone when those corridors were full of monsters.

MAZES OF OGGLAR is a retro puzzle-FPS inspired by the games mentioned earlier, except that it doesn’t really feature any shooting. Instead, your only goal is to find a way out of a mazy as quickly as possible, all while avoiding deadly traps and using a variety of items to your advantage. To top things off, the game looks like it was released three decades ago, thanks to the pixelated graphics.

Since there’s no shooting to worry about, the maze is much more complex, especially since there is no map to help you along either. Instead, you must memorize the patterns and try to remember them without getting lost in the process. Since most corridors look the same, this can be easier said than done. Things get even trickier once traps and special doors are added to the mix.

Every now and again special obstacles make an appearance, such as pits you must jump over, or laser fields that kill you as soon as you touch them. Since you revert back to the beginning with each death, it’s better to move slowly and carefully navigate every obstacle. You can also pick up health packs to heal yourself along the way, but you must find them first.

Since the game is designed to both feel and look retro, the graphics are not particularly impressive, but they are not ugly either. They really look like they were designed to run on MS-DOS, but in fact that are some current-gen effects in there as well. The sound effects are fairly creepy as well, but unfortunately the soundtrack not on Doom’s level.

Since it never provides you with any tips or guides, MAZES OF OGGLAR is obviously designed for hardcore fans who do not mind a high difficulty level. However, the game itself is not hard to play, at least as long as you can put up with the frustrating maze design.