Magic Maze

Magic Maze is an excellent example of a timed collaborative experience. It is easy to teach and learn, and the way that the scenarios gradually add complexity makes it easy to onboard a new player and build the level of challenge over time. The level of shared engagement and focus that this produces is the real charm here, as the collective feels a strong sense of challenge while still feeling like success is achievable. With scalable difficulty, this game offers a great short experience or a more extended series of challenge, and will be a regular warm-up or energizer with my gaming group. I also think that we will sometimes end up just playing this the whole session. Having the restrictions on talking is a great feature for a co-op game, as it eliminates the negative experience of one player captaining and bossing everyone around. All in all, this is an excellent example of this type of game, and has enough substance to be more than a one or two time that was interesting experience.

This is hectic, chaotic fun. For either amount of players, each one has to move their characters as fast as possible to reach the exit without letting the time run out. Each player has only a determined set of movements available, so cooperation is required, but cannot talk! This game is a blast at family night! No heavy rules, no text at all, easy to understand even for small children. Four played (with a 4-yo and a 15-yo) and we all had fun! Plays in about 20-mins. Recommended buy!

If you like real quick co-op games with limited conversation allowed, try this one! The family loved it, we played it again and again. Even when we beat a level, the family wanted to play it again and do it better. FUN!

Picked up Magic Maze because I enjoy playing co-op games with friends. This one intrigued me because there's less talking/collaborating during the rounds (which sounds counterintuitive to what you want in a co-op game), but I was trying to prevent one person from strategizing the entire game and just having the other people be pawns to move the other characters of the game. (We've all been there.) The game has 7 tutorial scenarios to help introduce new rules and is pretty simple to pick up and understand. When you start playing, it gets chaotic as you try to nudge the other players to do what only they can do to move the characters in the game without communicating in any way. Highly recommend picking it up! Disclaimer, probably shouldn't pick it up if anyone in your group is easily anxious or angry.