HARDCORE Maze Cube is an interesting game in that it combines several different elements to create a whole experience. First and foremost, HARDCORE Maze Cube (HMC) is a game where you need to find your way through a maze to an endpoint that is not outside of the maze, but a semi-hidden location within the maze. I have found that navigating through the mazes, the ones that I have made it through anyway, are not overly complicated and remind me of the ones I created on graph paper in elementary school. Now, because I have only made it to the fifth maze, perhaps they become more demanding in terms of multiple paths, or Overlook-level of complexity, but the game did introduce a new lighting mechanic that I wasn't fully able to utilize before dying and was forced to start over.
 |
The threat with this trap is that the moving walls are not visible until
your path is blocked off. Plus you can see the dart-cannons on either
side of this chamber, but they don't always fire when you' |
Now, if this were a simple find-the-end maze game, there would not be a need for the HARDCORE in the title, although the game does have the feature that you can go through the maze for the sole purpose of reaching the end. However, you have to have had already completed that level to play in the Relaxing Mode which removes all hazards and operates solely as a maze game. But what gives the game the appropriately titled HARCORE is that there is a constant attempt to prevent you from reaching the end by way of all manner of traps. From firey-bolt darts that shoot when you are nearby to collapsing bridges, rolling Indiana Jones-style boulders, and almost everything in between. The majority of these traps had some type of tell that they existed and would kill you in an instant, such as the dart cannon-things being visible, or the boards of a bridge already being cracked that will give way once you move over them. However, there were a few traps that you only learned by being killed be it dart cannons that sprung up out of wall, or mechanical rat-skull-things that dart out of debris (while in the previous level, harmless scurrying rats were have conditioned the player that these background animations cannot kill you. These types of traps I felt were cheap considering how the structure of the game operated, directing you towards dead ends or having hazards just off-screen but still aware of your presence..
As you progress through each maze, you can pick up cubes that dot the maze making the levels like something out of Pac-Man's nightmares. For every 30 cubes you picked up you were awarded a free life, and lives are a hot commodity in this game. The dangerous part about picking up additional cubes, even when you manage to find the exit, is that they will inevitably lead you into more traps and potentially more chances to die. In a way to aid the player, the game makes mention of checkpoints and save points starting in the second maze, but five mazes in, I never came across either a save point or a checkpoint or if did, it was never made clear now to interact with them. This became a problem because once you lose all of your hard-earned squishy lives, you are forced to start over from the beginning.
 |
I nearly died here because I didn't understand that the scrolls filled in
the answer for you. |
When you reach the endpoint of the maze, you are taken before what I can only assume is the antagonist based on the narration at the beginning of the game, and are given the option of starting the maze you just completed over to look for another way out, or to answer a riddle. Now, this is where the game did something I did not at all expect. Having a genuine riddle at the end of the stage was a pretty great mechanic because it does not really fit in with the rest of the game, at least in theory. While you are running through the maze gathering cubes, in some levels you also pick up pieces of scrolls (you are told these are from previous people/cubes who attempted the maze and died). When you reach the end of the stage and choose to be given a riddle, the answer is given to you based on the number of scrolls you picked up. If you gathered two of the possible four, you will be given a couple of letters and the rest will be obscured. If you collect all four scrolls, you do not solve the riddle so much as just fill in the answer with the available letters. In levels that do not have scrolls, you are instead given what seems like it should be a logic puzzle, but it seems, at least to me, based more on how much the player was paying attention to the symbols they come across in the maze. And just like anything else in the game, if you are not correct in your answer, you die and start the maze over.
The only other mode I could access was "Time for Life" which essentially is a speedrun mode, giving you more points for the faster you complete the maze. This mode also keeps intact the choice of the riddle at the end of each maze, and I am not sure if the game continues to time you while you give your answer. I should also mention that the devs were smart, at least with the Switch port, in that if you press the Home button back to the Home Switch menu, the timer continues. Yeah, I did try and cheat the system during one of the logic puzzles and when I came back I immediately died. It was worth a shot though. There was a "Hardcore" mode, but that required you to have beaten the game first, so I moved on.
 |
| Literally, the furthest I got in the game. |
Initially, I was annoyed that you could not just restart from the beginning of the last maze, but this appears to be a core mechanic in the game. Because the player is expected to become proficient in each maze, memorizing the location of each cube, and each trap, that flying through the levels will be second nature. Think of it as the Dark Souls of 2D mazes, except this maze is full of gotcha-one-hit-kill-traps and does not always play fair. The surprise traps, constantly having to restart from the beginning, and feeling that progress was not happening as quickly as I would have liked, I ultimately decided to put the game down after a couple of hours playing.
I do not think that HARDCORE Maze Cube is a bad game entirely. I like the combination of working your way through a maze, collecting objects to earn one-ups and give hints to the end-of-maze riddle, that the maze has traps, and especially the inclusion of riddles, but the execution I am not a fan of. I wish there was a little more explanation as to the checkpoints and save points, how the scoring system works, and maybe have a bit of randomization in the maps (but I realize this last one takes away the learning aspect). I am sure that there are people who enjoy this level of difficulty in this type of game, but I just happen to not be that person. But I am sure that they are out there and HARDCORE Maze Cube will not be hardcore enough for them and the rest of us will just need to git gud.
~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
To Die In The Same Place
P.S.
And for making it all the way to the end of this article, here is a semi-super cut of me dying a lot. This idea came about, sadly enough, during my second-to-last attempt in the game and realized that I made it only eight seconds into the maze before I was killed by a swinging pendulum that I had forgotten was there. If I knew life was going to be so fickle, I would have recorded every single one of my deaths and had a feature-length movie by the end of the three days I spent.
I haven't decided if this is something that I will continue doing for games that allow video capture.
P.P.S.
Lastly, for those of you keeping score, here was the state of the online Leaderboard as of Saturday, September 12th at 9:09:16.
 |
| 2nd on Time for Life Baby! (And it's probably gone at this point). |
No comments:
Post a Comment