My personal review of the 2017 Halloween Maze

  1. 6 years ago

    This review will NOT contain any spoilers on how to complete the maze. While it will talk about some of the concepts used in the maze, you will not learn anything on how to solve it by reading this post. These ratings are only my personal opinions.

    Difficulty: HARD
    Originality: 9/10
    Level Design: 4/10
    Scare Factor: 4/10
    Enjoyability: Oh, boy, tough one... Let's say 7/10

    Originality
    Never seen anything quite like this maze before...The classic trick of hugging the wall won't work for this one! Multiple levels and frequent teleportation (including tracks that take you back to previous levels) constantly keep you guessing, confused, and very, very lost. :P This could be implemented in a lot more mazes. It turns the experience into more of a puzzle/memory game instead of tedious wandering along walls.

    Level Design
    Hmm, where do I start...? :P Think I'll just get all my criticism off my chest here. Maze creators, please don't feel too bad...I really do appreciate all the work you've put into creating this. :P

    Can't Leave - This one explains itself. I think if it was a shorter maze, the whole you-can't-teleport-out-no-matter-what thing wouldn't be too bad, but as it is, it's just too time-consuming to force people to stay in there. This is mostly a survival server, after all. :)

    Can't Restart - It would be great to be able to just restart the maze from the beginning if you get totally lost. My friend Rexshell joined after I was already in the maze, and we were hoping to go through it together, but I was already lost inside and in over my head. By some miracle, we did manage to find each other eventually, but it would be nice to implement a feature like that.

    Length - It's just too long. I can understand getting teleported back a level or two to keep you on your toes, but not multiple levels, or all the way back to the beginning. I'm guessing this maze would take AT LEAST a half hour to get through, IF you know every single path to take (and believe me, there are many). Count in losing tons of progress to a single wrong turn (which, I would like to add, is just plain frustrating), and you're looking at well over an hour. Rexshell and I completed it together in a little over an hour and fifteen minutes, but we used screenshare over Discord to help guide each other through based on what we could remember, so it was a team effort. Probably the average single player is looking at an hour and a half to two hours of time spent in the maze.

    Doors and Halls - There are just too many doors. I'm going to hear the sounds of pressure plates and iron doors smacking shut in my sleep. :P Even in straight hallways, you had to walk through countless doors, although there was only one way to go. Speaking of those hallways, there were a few stretches where you just had to walk down one preordained path for a long time. While I was glad for the not-getting-lost factor, it was just another time-consuming element that I could have done without.

    Slowness/Nausea - Not scary, just annoying. Especially the slowness, which is so intense you literally cannot move unless you jump.

    Lighting - Low lighting is scary, pitch black is annoying. The first level was good, with periodic redstone torches, but when you can hardly see what you're doing, frustration gets real.

    Now, for the good points: I did like how the floors were made of different blocks, so you could tell where you were. The cake room was cool--I thought for sure we were dead when we hit that level because the cake is a lie... :P 2x1 hallways are never fun, but I guess for a spooky maze, it makes sense. The implementation of stairs in the iron level was a nice change of scenery; I would have liked to see more of that sort of thing. I'm not sure what I think about the door rooms.

    Scare Factor
    First off, I would like to say I didn't get jumpscared once. I mean, I got jumpscared hundreds of times, but nothing spooked me, not even the first one. Probably part of it is the initial understanding that pressure plates activate things, and this is a Halloween maze, so obviously pressure plates are probably going to trigger jumpscares. Another part is that the sounds were too frequent to really do anything to my psyche. After watching a bunch of horror games and maps, I've learned you have to lead people into a false sense of security and keep the spooks rare, so they never know when it's coming. I would suggest more visual jumpscares as well, as opposed to audio. Elder guardian is on the right track, but gets old after a bit, and it's too slow. Maybe momentary teleportations to dark rooms showing something scary? It's gotta be quick and startling.

    All that being said, I did rate the scare factor 4/10 instead of 1 or 0. That's because when Rexshell and I went through it, we literally stood cowering in corners afraid to step on pressure plates, because the farther we got, the more terrified we were that we'd be teleported back. All. The way. To the beginning. That was something neither of us wanted to deal with, especially after an hour of pointless wandering. The farther we went, the more nervous we got. I've never experienced a scare tactic quite like that before.

    Enjoyability
    I want to say I have kind of a love/hate relationship with the maze, but it's not love, and it's not hate...it's two different unrecognizable feelings. :P On the one hand, it's really unique. I thought I was going to whip through this maze using the wall-hugging trick, and I got taken down a peg, so I appreciated that. On the other hand, it just takes SO LONG...I thought I could check out the maze quick and then sort out some chests at my base, maybe come back to the maze later if I couldn't solve it right away. Instead, I was stuck in there for well over an hour, and I couldn't get done what I wanted to last night. I can understand wanting people to not just give up on the maze, but maybe some kind of warning about the length of the maze and a reiteration that you literally can't leave until you finish would be helpful, so people know what they're getting themselves into when they step on that plate.

    Feel free to post your own opinions below! Please try to avoid spoilers for the consideration of others, though. Thanks!

  2. what the fuck?

  3. Difficulty: AAAAAHHHHH
    Originality: One of a Kind
    Level Design: Evil (I suggest adding a "loser" tp option in the book that overrides the no tp thing)
    Scare Factor: Spoopy
    Enjoyability: I keep running it over and over again, so I guess that answers that.

    Best maze
    10 outta 10

  4. @MagicalMapmaker I'm guessing this maze would take AT LEAST a half hour to get through, IF you know every single path to take (and believe me, there are many).

    Huh? (just an fyi for those reading: if you haven't done the maze yet and want to avoid spoilers, don't click this)

  5. @deyahruhd Huh? (just an fyi for those reading: if you haven't done the maze yet and want to avoid spoilers, don't click this)

    How did you do that?! :P Consider me proven wrong. :)

  6. @MagicalMapmaker How did you do that?! :P Consider me proven wrong. :)

    There's a consistent route throughout the maze, so it's basically just memorizing which direction to go.

    However it's very easy to not pay attention and accidentally go the wrong way. For instance, at 4:55 of the video when I enter the red sand area, I wasn't paying enough attention and went through the wrong door, which presented me (if I remember correctly) two "route back" possibilities: either I get returned back to the beginning of that red sand area, or I get returned to the beginning of the iron level. I chose the first option in order to go through the right door.

  7. i say it's pretty cool, dudes

  8. Hello, BaronBattleBread here, unbenounced mastermind behind the maze. Ive been out of country for the week and ive been waiting for someome to talk.about the maze :3

    So, thanks for the review :D i love hearing our work is appreciated, and now im gonna explain some things.

    First- the doors :D
    The maze was my personal shrine to the indie classic, Spookys House of JumpScares (aka- 1,000 doors).
    It was my i spiration and were an effective tool in keeping people moving forward.

    Second- jumpscares... are really hard. Spawn immediatly deletes active mobs and alot of people dont have sound on so we werent left with many choices. They wree more a gimmik than anything, u fortunatly.

    Third- Entrapment. This was not actually part of the design. We blocked TPs in the area, to prevent cheating using warps and player marks. We are working on a way around it, unfortunatly we cant do it without Crafty, but we should have a fix soon. I thought we had a warning sign up. My apologies.

    4th- Length.
    Every year, i design a bigger and better maze for halloween. Its my favorite part of being an admin here, my contribuiton, if you will.
    Last year i spent 4 weeks designing, building and perfecting the biggest and spookiest maze craftymynes had ever seen- and players bypassed the fun with enderpearls, TPs, and even sharing maps on these forums... i was heartbroken. This year i decided to make up for it with a mind game and i think we nailed it. Perhaps i went a little overboard.. XD sorry/not sorry

    Rnc2011 spent 4 late nigjts working the TPs with me, trying to piece together the chaos i was designing. And he did :) you can thank him for helping bring my nightmare to your reality. It took our test subject 45 minutes to complete- with cheat signs. :P
    It had to be long and complicated to help detere mapping and repetition... obviously we cant stop it, but we did slow it down :)

    As far as the designs of the floors goes.. i ran out of ideas as i was moving. I wanted to make each floor as unique as possible while making them seem similar to other floors of their block type. But ill keep that cake is a lie idea in mind for nwxt year :D

    i made the prize my head. I get my revenge, you get your scare, and you can beat me in effigy when you're done.

    Love you guys, and keep it comming- i want to hear everything you think about the maze :D

  9. Where is the maze located at?

  10. By the graveyard, 2nd floor of the mansion there.

  11. thanks

  12. The mansion was brilliant - so spooky.

    And the maze aMAZEing! Thank you so much baron and rnc for all your hard work.

    It was quite a suprise to not be able to get out of it so an extra thank you to Doppy and Ven who rescued numerous players.

  13. Going to be honest, the back tracking is a pain in the ass. I think it was pointless for one of the cake rooms teleporters to set you all the way back to the start of the iron. Wasn't clever at that point, just annoying. The proper way to do it was the trick pressure plates at the diorite part and the way it sets you back to the start of THAT part.

  14. I liked the pressure plate on the first level that teleports you to the second. Since it wasn't at a corner or dead end (hope this isn't a spoiler), I didn't even notice I was on the next level. I had a bad connection so I thought it was just lag :P I liked the stairs on the iron level. I liked that that level had another dimension. I also got teleported from the last level to the first level, but I was able to get back up there quickly. All in all, I prefer this maze other last years, it was much more interesting, in terms or appearance and layout, and, for those who don't like pressure plates, it had less pressure plates.

  15. @BaronBattleBread Third- Entrapment. This was not actually part of the design. We blocked TPs in the area, to prevent cheating using warps and player marks. We are working on a way around it, unfortunatly we cant do it without Crafty, but we should have a fix soon. I thought we had a warning sign up. My apologies.

    To disable setting warps in the maze but also being able to tp out, there could be a button at the start of each level that teleports players back to spawn, and then they are no longer in the maze.

  16. @The3xpertGamer To disable setting warps in the maze but also being able to tp out, there could be a button at the start of each level that teleports players back to spawn, and then they are no longer in the maze.

    It has been taken care of. You should be able to teleport home now

  17. That was lots of fun!

  18. Funny how mumbo also made a maze video @ around the same time

  19. Apologies for being absent for all of this. Ive just taken a new job and had to move, so life has been extremely hectic as I try to sort this all out.

    Im SO glad that it sounds like the general consensus was that you enjoyed the maze. Baron worked extremely hard planning it all out and I was glad that I got to help in a small capacity and see his vision come to life.

    Heres to many more mazes!

  20. I'm not a fan of mazes in general, although this maze was more interesting than most others because all of the different levels were made differently than the rest, when most mazes are the same design repeated for the entire thing.

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