Labyrinth (by Ravensburger)

Labyrinth

Labyrinth is one of the first games of strategy that I have played with my son where the game is very balanced for children as well as adults.  It plays 2-4 players and takes about 20 minutes.  It was created in 1986 and as been a best seller for a very long time. There are also junior versions of this game which have less and larger tiles to make moving the labyrinth slightly easier for younger kids.  This game is recommended for children 8 and up however I play it with my 5 year old.  I think easily you can skip over the junior version unless you have younger kids and you want your children to play together instead of playing with you helping them out.

There are also now many themes of Labyrinth so check these out if you want one of those to get the one you desire. I love our original copy but occasionally I wish we had the Harry Potter one, however I really don't need both so we will stick with the original one.


Game Play

This game requires a little bit of set up. The game board has fixed square labyrinth pieces and then enough labyrinth pieces to fill the board in plus one extra.  These tile pieces are placed in the labyrinth for set up in a random order. The extra piece is how the labyrinth is moved throughout the game. All over the labyrinth there are images of the treasures which correspond to the 24 treasure cards your wizard must land on to be able to win the game.

Each player is given a number of cards with treasures on them, divided by the number of players. In a four player game all the cards are used, with each player getting six. When we playing just a two player game get eight cards each to make it more enjoyable. Children playing the game are encouraged to have all their cards face up and they are allowed to land on their treasures in any order they choose.  Whereas adults must have a face down stack of treasure cards and are only allowed to look at one at a time. This balances the game very nicely between adults and kids. My son playing like this often wins now so only half of his cards are face up and the other half will be face down to allow us to increase the difficulty of the game for him.

Labyrinth is a racing to get your own treasures and get back to your home colour before any other wizard.  The players move the labyrinth squares on their turn to be able to move the wizard around it and land on the tiles with their own treasures on it.  The active player takes the labyrinth piece from where it has been left by the previous player, then that player slides one row or column of the labyrinth using that square. After the player moves the labyrinth they can move as far as they desire as long as the path is clear.  If the player lands on one if their card requirements then they can turn that card over, if not they wait until their next turn to be able to move the labyrinth again. There is only one massive rule when moving the labyrinth, you cannot move the row that the extra piece was taken from (there are more specifics to this so see the rules). This means that you cannot just move one row back and forth and so if someone pushes your wizard in a direction you don't like you can't always fix it in one move, it might take a few turns to fix your position.

This inability to just move one row back and forth makes the game a nice challenge and teaching players to look at the larger picture of the labyrinth is really interesting to watch how they go about achieving the goal of landing on their various treasures.


Review

If you can't tell I adore this game. It has a lot of subtle strategy and challenge when playing with a child but even more when playing with an adult where you can do things like wall each other in or screw each other over.  You cannot help messing with other players as you play and I like the fact that it isn't done in a "take that" fashion more as just part of the ever shifting labyrinth.  I dislike games that screw over other players for the sake of it, whereas in this game you might do it, but not necessarily on purpose (although you can do it on purpose as well if you desire).

I love that this game is teaching my child a lot about spacial reasoning and perception. Understanding things like looking at all his cards and not just picking the nearest one but maybe selecting the one that has the first easiest route, or the easiest route to the next treasure card. This game offers many many layers of thought and strategy for adults and kids hence why it has been around nearly as long as some of us parents! In comparison to games like monopoly I think hands down this one is considerably more fun and enjoyable by all, and the winner can truly feel like they worked towards their own win and not just rolled dice randomly until they won (you can see how I feel about monopoly there!).

This game is available everywhere! High street shops sell it, friendly local game stores, online, second hand - everywhere. Just check if you are buying it second hand that it has all the pieces because if you are missing even one you can't play it, there are ways to replace missing pieces but its hard so really check the box before buying one used.  I nearly bought one that was missing three pieces and that would have been a very sad day when we got home and couldn't play it!