LogFAQs > #969768664

Crystal Maze (PC)

So I bought, played and beat this game today for sentimental reasons. In the early-mid 2000s, there was a demo of a game that I played on my Papa's computer but never had/played the full game. In the game, you played as a girl, running around a maze-like area collecting gems. In the level I remember from the demo, you were by the sea... perhaps on a boardwalk or stone path on the water? I couldn't remember for sure but what I do know is that I had tried in the past to find it and based on the description I gave, I received a lot of suggestions, all of them being ruled out. And my Papa died 8 years ago and that computer is long gone, so there's no way I'd find it that way. I tried again today, inspired by Anagram's obscure game identification topic, but before I made the post I decided to try one last Hail Mary on Google to see if I could come up with anything. After a lot of stuff that I'd either already ruled out or weren't close, I came across this that piqued my interest... and what do you know, this was it. For $5 I figured I'd give it a whirl.

I mean, I guess I wasn't expecting a masterpiece out of obvious shovelware but it was a decent distraction for the day. It's pretty short. Less than 2 hours. My above description is actually a pretty decent representation of the game, except that there are also enemies chasing you around the board. Luckily, Lily, the protagonist, is a lot faster than most of the enemies so you can always outrun them. It's just a matter of not cornering yourself, which can actually be pretty easy to do, especially in the later levels and because the map can sometimes be a challenge to navigate either due to unforgiving hitbox detection or difficulty deciphering steps. My other complaint is that the difficulty absolutely jacks up for the final six levels. I mean there it just really jacks up near the end and nothing prepares you for it. I went into the final stretch of six (out of 49) levels with 23 lives and beat the game with 4 lives (that includes those that I earned during that stretch). It was bonkers.

Anyway, it was nice to play this game again, and in full. Was a nice little reminder of time at Grandma and Papa's house.