Review: Emily and the Magic Maze

Emily is out Trick-or-Treating when she wanders across a haunted house. A magical black cat inside mistakes her for a real witch and turns her costume broom into a real flying witch's broom. Now she has to escape from the house before the evil witch who lives there catches her.

Graphics:
Excellent. The characters are well drawn, and although it's a tile-based game, there's enough variety in the tiles that it's not too noticeable.

All the animated characters move fluidly, and their idle animations loop seamlessly.

The menus are well drawn, but the interface elements don't give a lot of feedback, unfortunately. They seem to respond to input too quickly and the game jumps to the next screen before the interface animation has time to complete. But, that's a minor quibble.

That's one of the prettier interfaces I've seen recently.

Sound:
The effects work well, and the music is both appropriately spooky and bouncy.

Both the music and effects can be disabled at any time, and the audio levels are very good, which is something that a lot of developers seem to overlook. I can't count the number of times I've nearly had my ears blown out by an overly loud effect.

Gameplay:
The object of each level is to fly Emily around a room, pick up a key and exit through the door. It's relatively straightforward, except, since she's only just learning to fly, Emily can't stop herself and will fly forward in a direction until she hits an obstacle. Therein lies the puzzle.

Now you're thinking with portals.

Things start off simply enough, but soon there are multiple enemies and obstacle types, and picking up all the optional treasure (candy, naturally) before reaching the exit can get a bit tricky. You'll breeze right through the first two levels, but once you hit about level 15, even veteran puzzle gamers will find at least some small challenge.

There are five achievements to earn, but you'll grab most of them without even trying.

I got this one without even doing anything.

What I liked:
-Brief interludes between the levels add a little levity and explain the game mechanics. The English isn't perfect, but it's passable.
-Puzzles get more complex as the game progresses.
-Sounds work well and fit in with the game's aesthetic.

Before levels, the cat gives you advice. Always take advice from animals. They know what's up.

What I hated:
-One terrible bug.
-There aren't more levels available. This is the kind of thing I could play for a while.

Final Verdict:
If not for one, simple but important bug, this would have been my first 5-star review. Unfortunately, the game failed to save my progress when I quit. I'd only put about half an hour into it, and I could probably complete the whole thing in a single sitting, but that's still unforgivable. It doesn't occur in all situations, but I was able to reproduce it.

Emily and the Magic Maze is available for free from Lilium on BlackBerry App World.
Reviewed version 1.0.1