The first labyrinth was a mythological maze built by King Minos of Crete. Minos needed the maze to hide the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull beast who was the offspring of Minos’ wife, Queen Pasiphaë, who had a real thing for bulls. That labyrinth, we’re told by the Roman poet Ovid, ‘framed confusion and seduced the eye into a maze of wandering passages’.

Today labyrinths can be found on your Nokia touch-enabled device, though solely for the purpose of providing wholesome fun and amusement. For this two-part review, I tested four labyrinth games. All utilise the built-in accelerometer – essentially a motion detector — on selected Nokia devices. You play these games by tilting and twisting your Nokia device, guiding a ball through a modern-day ‘maze of wandering passages’.

Labyrinth Touch

There is a big difference between today’s mobile labyrinth games and the little plastic maze puzzles you might remember from when you were a kid. Namely, the large number of levels and options. With a plastic maze, what you see is what you get. But not so in the mobile world.

For example, Labyrinth Touch offers three ‘worlds’ or play environments – wood, garden, and caramel – and then nine levels of play in each, for a total of 27 different games. And the upper levels are plenty challenging.

Like all the games I tested, Labyrinth Touch causes your device to vibrate when the ball touches a wall. It’s a nice, um, touch.

Also, as you play, a timer at the top of the screen shows both your current elapsed time and your previous record for that particular game. So you can play not only against the game, but also against your previous time records.

Usability is a breeze. On a Nokia S60 5th Edition device with touch UI, you simply tap the screen at any time to get three commands: return to game selection, advance to the next level, or restart the current game.

MicroMaze

Offering a truly minimalist UI, MicroMaze by Botond FM is nonetheless deep: There are no fewer than 80 levels of play. While I found the lower levels super-easy, things got very challenging very quickly.

The different levels also get you different backgrounds and playing materials – wood, metal, marble, and more. I also enjoyed the quiet applause the game plays on the soundtrack each time I completed a level.

Unlike the other games, MicroMaze has you racing against the clock – take too long, and your game ends. There’s a timer along the right-hand side of the screen, and as you approach the last few seconds, a clock ticks loudly as a warning. Still aren’t finished? Then an ‘Out of Time’ message appears on the screen, and you have to start again.

MicroMaze also places a limit on how far ahead you can play. For example, when you start, only levels 1 through 5 are open, everything from Level 6 and above is locked. As you complete new levels, more open ahead of you. And tap the screen at any time, and you get a simple UI: reset, main menu, or restart.

I was unable to capture screenshots of MicroMaze on my Nokia N97, but here is a screen capture from the developer’s website:

And here is a YouTube video of MicroMaze being played on a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic device:

Labyrinth Touch is available in Ovi Store for $2.99. MicroMaze is available in Ovi Store for $4.99; you can also download a Lite version for free.

Tomorrow I will have the second half of my round-up featuring the Labyrinth games Marble Maze 2 Touch and Motion Board for your Nokia touch-enabled device. Don’t get lost on your way back to the blog tomorrow!