Mazes are interesting. As a child, Dave couldn't get enough of mazes, plowing through books and books of more and more complex and intricate maze-y challenges. When videogames started taking his spare time however, the mazes presented did not illicit the same reaction of fun and wonder. Instead there was only tedium and frustration (the basement of 'The 7th Guest being one such annoying memory). Perhaps the difference between mazes on paper and mazes in videogames is one of perception. On paper, you see the entire maze like a map before you. Often it's in the shape of something amusing, and all its windy passages evoke curiosity. In a game you're plopped down in the middle of the maze and all you see is blocked passages impeding escape. It's probably why hedge mazes aren't really that fun either.

What this all has to do with Find the Princess is that the game revolves around mazes. Randomly generated mazes. A princess is at the end of this maze, and you travel through its horde of dead ends, evading monsters, collecting gems, animals, and power-ups along the way. The game is presented in an isometric top down perspective, and movement is quite intuitive. A simple tap will place a target along with the proposed path for your character to take. His direction can be changed at a moment's notice in case you need to flee a beastie, and it makes for very fluid maze movement.

But sadly the mazes are pretty basic. There are three different types that randomly generate, but it's always the same T-intersections and corners. The whole things comes off as quite bland after one play. It also doesn't help that the other two difficulties need a large amount of coins to unlock, so you'll be grinding away on the easy stage. There is also customization of your character with hats and power-ups, and the ability to buy coins through in-app purchase if you so wish.

If anything Find the Princess highlights the problems in basing a game around navigating mazes. While there is a top down perspective so you can see a good chunk of the maze, nothing interesting is done with the maze shapes or pathways, and the whole experience is very slow paced and becomes boring rather quickly. This one's only for the curious.