[Board Games] Labyrinth - Fun With Kids or Adults

This game has been around since 1986 and is considered a classic children's game. It's been translated into many different languages and had scads of different versions/revisions over the past 30+years. In this review, I'll be referencing the 2007 Ravensburger edition. I have mostly played this game with my children, but recently also played it with a group of adult friends, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

The objective of the game is to traverse the labyrinth and collect the treasures that correspond to the Treasure Cards distributed to each player. Each player looks at the top card of their draw deck, but does not show the other players. This is the first treasure the player will try to obtain.

The game board itself consists of 16 labyrinth tiles which are fixed into position.

To set up the game, the loose tiles (except for one, which we'll come back to momentarily) are randomly laid out in the open spaces on the board.

Each player starts on the dot that corresponds to the color of their piece.

A player's turn consists of two actions:

1. You MUST shift the labyrinth
2. You MAY move your piece

Shifting the labyrinth consists of taking the extra tile and sliding it into position at the end of any movable row, such that all tiles in the shifted row are moved one space, and the end tile of the row is shifted off the board. This displaced tile now becomes the extra tile for the next player's turn. After the labyrinth has been shifted, the player may, but does not have to, move their piece. The player may move to any tile to which the player's piece has a clear path. Play then passes to the next player.

Once a player is able to obtain the treasure on the top card of the draw deck, that player lays the card face up on the table to "claim" the treasure. They then look at the next card in their draw deck. Play continues until one player has claimed all the treasures in their draw deck and moved back to their starting space.

In our recent game session, this served as a warm-up game, before we got into something heavier. It's a fairly quick, light game that is easy to teach, and gets everyone's brains in gaming mode. This game is not a complex strategy game where you think several moves ahead. The ever changing layout of the board, as well as the one-at-a-time nature of the card draw means that you have to keep your focus on the objective immediately in front of you.

However, there is a lot of room for variation, which can level the playing field and allow kids and adults to play together without anyone feeling alienated. For example, you can vary the number of treasures required to win based on skill level. Or you could allow younger players to win without having to make it back to the starting space. Or even have the adults play open-faced, so the kids have a better chance of blocking them.

The basic structure of the game is simple enough to allow for this type of versatility. I'm sure this is a big reason this game has been successful for so long.