Sit Down, Magic Maze, Strategy Card Game, Ages 8+, 1-8 Players, 15+ Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

This is a fantastic tool for ruining relationships, frustrating your wife, or for looking like a fool. It’s still not where you’re going to find the fun – the hook that generates that grin I promised you earlier. Once all your pawns get onto the square that contains the loot, everyone steals what they came in to steal, and then you all need to make your way to the exits.

This is a very good game of wordless communication and anticipation, and when you can fluidly complete the level with no miscommunications it’s a very good experience for the whole group. Hanabi, Hive, Love Letter, and more have all come under criticism for greater or lesser offences against our sensibilities. I play board games for the social interaction and Magic Maze puts a massive barrier in the way of that. She’s banging the ‘do something’ pawn again and again and again and all she’s done is move the purple. Suddenly someone will comment on the size of the rule book being much larger than what you read up to.

I’ve heard some reviewers say that they wouldn’t play with more than four or five players because of these logistical concerns. However, they are a nice addition if you need them, and they do distinguish the pieces one from another. Because all players have to be able to reach the maze, finding places for players to sit can be challenging.

It’s a super-great cooperative game, and I’d highly recommend it if you think it would be a good fit for your group! Silence is a tricky beast to harness in a game – it needs to act like steam building pressure in an engine.It’s not uncommon for a player to move a pawn in one direction, only to have another player move the pawn right back.

All photos on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4. Just as he does though, the sand timer drips down and it looks like no-one is in a position to turn it! Then with one hand turn the cards over, perform the action on the card (if desired) and then place face up in a discard pile.The first is that it’s frustrating rather than funny to be the source of everyone else’s impatience.

I like that vortexes are included; I also like that vortexes are no longer allowed once the heist happens. Just in front of them; no using it to signal that you want them to use an action (if their Action Tile has more than one). In each subsequent scenario, characters will have to make it to their own exits, which are spread out around the mall. It’s a small co-op game where you’re trying to get 4 heroes to their ‘theft’ tiles then get them to the exit(s) before the timer runs out. You need to find the fun in someone banging a pawn in front of you while you become ever more increasingly aware of the fact that you’re the bottleneck in the whole unfolding disaster – that nobody can do anything until you do the one critical yet entire hidden thing that unblocks everyone else.

When a pawn hits a space with a magnifying glass that matches its color and symbol, take the top tile off the tile stack and orient it such that the white arrow points towards the center of the tile. The “do something” pawn is big and red, matching the color of the shame-faced players it’s placed in front of. Place each Hero Pawn on their corresponding Item Space; depicted by the identical symbol and colour of each Hero. If you believe board game accessibility is important and can support our Patreon you'd be helping make sure the site can continue with this valuable work.