Board? Game Review-Labyrinth



One excellent picture, freshly ripped off of Amazon.com

 Labyrinth. The word brings to mind a twisting maze of stone and rock, with the rapid thuds of the Minotaur's hoved feet booming through the torchlight corridors...

That is, if you have a PhD in Greek Mythology. To the rest of us, our mind fires a blank in the face of such an unspellable nine letter word. Games like Labyrinth take something as appealing as sandwich mold and sterilize it for our young minds. Just look at the box art. The HUMAN SKULL looks like it's going to invite you in for tea and crumpets! (What the heck is a crumpet, anyway?) All this in the spirit that turned the Grimms' story Rapunzel into Tangled and Cinderella into a movie with a G rating.

Rant about children's stories aside, onward.


Most of the tiles on the board are mobile, and on your turn you move a row or column by pushing the spare tile in, shoving another tile off the other side, which is sort of shown in the picture. Then you move your man, trying to get to the next  object shown on your card. Sounds simple, right?
No. Execution is difficult, and takes a bit of brain-power to wrap your mind around.


Pros
Unique idea.
Easy to learn, hard to master.
Plenty of room for messing with your friends' plans, intentionally or not.
Catches the chaos of the Labyrinth. The more players, the more chaos.
Decent artwork, nice miniatures.
Should work well with kids. (I don't know, I don't have kids to play it with)

Cons
Cute. Happy. Fluffy. Bah, humbug.
Almost impossible to plan ahead.
The more you think, the longer your turn, but you win.