AFOLI’s The Maze Runner is showing the world how to solve puzzles

When I first downloaded this game, I originally thought it was about The Maze Runner movie that I just watched. But it’s completely different, and is also one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played.

The Maze Runner game is developed by seven indie game developers from Vietnam who have come together to call themselves AFOLI. This group was started about four months ago to work on an RPG project, and The Maze Runner is just one piece of its big puzzle.

Monsters in game

(See: 10 mobile games from Vietnam)

The Maze Runner combines great gameplay with abstract art. Its artwork is inspired by Piet Mondrian, a famous Dutch abstract painter, who had a very unique painting style. His works feature grids, painted squares, and rectangles of mostly solid colors. Most of the time, his paintings were made up of pure red, yellow, and blue, as well as black and white. Accordingly, the game has employed lots of those elements and transformed them into an important part of its puzzles and visuals.

Piet Mondrian’s art work

The Maze Runner starts out slow, but increases in intensity as you progress through it. I felt like I was watching Inception as I played, having to switch between colored rooms and create a new maze each time I switched.

You can watch trailer here:

Of course, this game is not entirely about solving the maze. You have to go through lots of obstacles such as ladders, fire, thorns, warp portals, and many types of monsters. You can also fight your way to a level where your characters can get geared up to fight monsters outright. The Maze Runner employs many surprising and creative factors to keep gamers entertained.

The Piet Mondrian animation style combining with minimalism make the game stand out from many other puzzle games in Asia. However, it took me several hours to understand how the game worked. I really didn’t The Maze Runner at the start because it doesn’t have clear instructions, and this was frustrating. It may take lots of time for players to figure out how to actually play it. But if you are patient enough to slowly go through the first few stages, it will open a whole new world of dazzling maze-solving puzzles.