Previous Next

The problem with mazes is that, apart from the universal and now rather hackneyed Pac Man, they have to be horrendously difficult to be interesting. Usually, the easier a maze is the sooner it comes tedious, all of which tends to dissuade the player from developing the appropriate technique to progress to harder things.

When you've got past the preliminary guff, which appears to represent itself as about some kind of adventure game (which it isn't), you have an ingenious variation on the "being chased around a maze by a monster" game.

You've been turned into a key by a wicked wizard, and the only way to escape is by changing colour to match the various doors to freedom. Some of them turn out to be false, with solid brick behind them. Racing around the corridors of the labyrinth are hordes of ghosts.

Movements can be controlled either by joystick or a selection of keys.

Although the corridor pattern doesn't seem to change from one game to another, which doors are real and which are false does, so you can't learn how to beat the game as you go on.

You are asked whether you want music at the preliminary menu stage, and if you'll take my advice you'll say no, since the electronic 'Greensleeves' becomes very irritating before many bars have elapsed.

The joystick seems to be very sensitive, which means considerable overshoot if you're not careful. Encounters with the ghosts aren't always fatal, since they sometimes just jump over you - something the instructions don't prepare you for.

To become the right colour, you have to go back to the beginning (top of the screen) and go through the appropriate colour keyhole - and this can mean scrolling back through kilometres of corridors if you've gone a reasonable distance.

Bewitched is a handy transition for the beginner not yet ready to become a maze addict, as it's far from impossible, yet still not too easy.

I suspect the key graphic was chosen at first because it was fairly easy to represent, using the low-resolution capabilities of the machine, but the idea is followed through in a very intriguing manner.