Brutal Labyrinth: Where Fire Is Your Friend
March 8, 2011
Brutal Labyrinth ($0.99) by Aniware AB utilizes accelerometer game play similar to other maze titles, while adding a few tricks along the way. Like other labyrinth games, you steer a metallic ball around and between obstacles, but in this app, the ball is a ticking time bomb. It contains 42 levels of physics-based action with realistic sound and graphics.
From a young age, people are taught to avoid flame of any sort, but fire is your friend in Brutal Labyrinth. As mentioned, the steel ball also doubles as an explosive device whose fuse lights when near any fire and blasts through objects that stand in the way of the end goal. Fortunately, most of the obstacles that you need to destroy contain a new ball to “carry the torch”.
The result of this “explosive” game play is that you must use a combination of skill and logic to complete the levels. You quickly learn that there are only a few seconds to detonation once the fuse is lit, so you are often rushing between the holes. Sometimes you are also required to backtrack towards an ignition source before you can move on.
The rivet and steel graphics work well with the pyrotechnic theme and the sounds are rich and fitting. But while the fire and bombs are a nice take on the familiar labyrinth style, there isn’t much else to differentiate it, and in terms of variety, it falls somewhere between the original Labyrinth and Labyrinth 2.
Some levels are exceptionally difficult beyond the point of just being challenging. And on top of that, when you fall in a hole, it takes several seconds before you re-spawn. Tapping the screen and replaying the level can somewhat circumnavigate this problem, but there is no reason why a replacement ball can’t pop up as soon as you fall down like other labyrinth games. It would also be nice to have checkpoints along the way instead of starting from the beginning after every time you fall or blow up your last ball.
Brutal Labyrinth takes the genre in a good direction, but the high level of difficulty and frustrating re-spawn delay hold back the potential. If you love similar games or are a sucker for a good challenge, Brutal Labyrinth may be for you. For everyone else, there are several much better options, such as Labyrinth 2 and Labyrinth Game.
