Preview: OctoMaze from Octagon Game Studio

In the puzzle game OctoMaze you take on the role of a miserly octopus. Most of the time you will wriggle your gripping arms into the earth to look for stolen artifacts. As a true treasure hunter, you try to claim everything for your own. Therefore you play several levels with each level offering new artifacts. Mainly gold! Still, you have to make an effort, since the treasures are guarded by various obstacles.

Stinky enemies and dangerous situations

Most of the time you have to face stinky enemies and rods with iron nails on them. Those are dangerous because they can turn your tentacles in small amounts of sushi. Although sushi is very delicious, you naturally want to keep your tentacles. Ultimately, the game therefore requires to be very accurate. Although the game lacks challenge in the first 10 levels, it gets a lot more interesting when more levels are being introduced.

The field consists of a grid that you can swipe with your finger. The tentacles of the octopus follow your finger movement. This works a bit slow and stiff, but quickly you get used to it. When you let go of the screen, the tentacle retreats into its dark hole. From then on you will have time to rethink how you will gain the golden coins. Although not that much thought was needed yet in the levels I played so far.

The solutions to most puzzles can be found at lightning speed, but the real challenge lies in completing a race against time. For example, the game presents a star system where you get a score in stars based on the time it took to complete the level. So far I have been able to play 15 levels in the demo. The levels were very similar and in order for this game to succeed, more variation is needed in the long run to keep entertained with this kind of game.

Break it or make OctoMaze

Currently, the main things that can break or make the final game are storytelling (why are you stealing the coins?), refining the controls and applying as much variation and challenge as possible to make the game fun in the long term. OctoMaze clearly has the potential to become a daily game snack of ten minutes or more. The game is not special and does not give a completely new point of view of what is possible within an indie game, still playing OctoMaze on Android was enjoyable so far.

OctoMaze is inspired by games like Oil’s Well, Anteater, and Bomberman. The full game will have five types of enemies, promises many levels with each having varying challenges, environments, power-ups, and collectibles. The game also has a promising nightmare bonus level, which Indie Game Reporter was not able to play, but sounds cool. The level promises lasers, flamethrowers, teleports, and much more.

This game from Octagon Game Studio is great to play during a small break so far. Do you want to give this game also a try? You can download Octomaze in the Android store. There is a free demo available which let you play 15 levels of the game. Octomaze is also available in paid early acces. It is currently unknown when the game will be fully available.