Many of us have played the Lines game on mobile. You are given a grid or area to connect various coloured blobs using lines that don’t cross over each other. Mazaica takes this idea but takes inspiration from geometry, mosaics and crazy paving to apply this simple puzzle formula to make something more nuanced and interesting than a bog standard time waster puzzle.
Mazaica is still a casual puzzle game at its heart. Levels are rated between 1 and 5 stars for their difficulty and you can unlock them using an overworld level select hex grid. Many levels have multiple difficulties and this dictates how many hints you are given and what type of hints they are. Levels have a designed version but then you can also have the initial placement and line length procedurally generated against a designed level layout too. This opens up Mazaica’s replayability.
Once in a level you can simple click and drag the starting point for each line to draw the Aztec squiggle across various blocks to match the number required to complete the line. To help you sometimes coloured accents are placed next to the block to give a hint of what colour line should go through it. You can also buy and use extra hints for completing lines, revealing the colour of a single path block or telling you the direction that the line needs to go from a path block. You can buy these through the coins earned by completing levels and Mazaica is generous with its hints if you need them.
As the game progresses and the levels get bigger and complicated, other additional gameplay considerations are added into the mix. Sometimes arrows force you to draw lines in a certain direction, or barriers refuse to let lines enter until they are a certain length. Many levels later in the game also have walls that prevent certain types of moves that make levels easier to complete too. Mazaica is never taxing or hard, but a big level with all the hints removed on hard difficulty means you’ll have more options and choices to work through methodically to reach your conclusion. This is where my single complaint for Mazaica comes in. Sometimes there are multiple ways to solve a level but often only one correct way is accepted. If the game doesn’t like what you’ve done, it will flash red but I had reached level completion a few times where I hadn’t broken any rules but the game would flash red and tell me it wasn’t what was expected anyway.
Those niggles are few and far between. The calm, zen, lack of panic gameplay scratches the itch of the Lines mobile game, but gives it more variety and cause for thinking over time. The coloured designs sometimes look quite artistic when they complete and satisfyingly shimmer into nothing too. This is a hidden gem for the Steam under £3 budget puzzle brigade that is well worth your time. There’s hours of enjoyment to be had here at a relaxed pace and the procedural element works well to extend its lifespan further. A great addition to the genre.
PC version tested. Review code provided by developer. Out now on Steam.
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