Labyrinth of Crete / Philips Media
                   PC CD-ROM   -  $29.00

                 Reviewed by Neil Shipman

One of the best puzzle games I have ever played on the computer,
way back when I had an Atari ST, was Fool's Errand (reviewed by
Dave Barker in Issue 13 of SynTax). I was delighted to learn a
little while ago then that Cliff Johnson, the author and designer
of this intricately woven and intriguing challenge, had produced
another puzzle game, Labyrinth of Crete.

As you might expect from the title, the game is based on Greek
Mythology.  You have been sentenced to death for stealing from
Hera, Queen of the Gods.  However, a reprieve from Zeus leaves you
trapped inside the Labyrinth and you must solve a series of
puzzles in order to escape.

You can play up to 12 separate games, each one consisting of 47
challenges.  These take the form of word, shape, action, memory
and logic puzzles. You can set the level of difficulty (choosing
from Beginner, Advanced and Expert) for each of the types of
challenge and it is also possible to change this while you are
playing. This can be particularly useful if you get completely
stuck halfway through a particular game and don't want to start a
new one at a different level of difficulty.

In most challenges, clicking the right mouse button or pressing
the space bar brings up a menu bar from which you can get
instructions on how to play, reset the puzzle, in some cases undo
your last action, alter the difficulty and change to a different
challenge or swap to another game. An autosave feature keeps track
of the challenges you have solved in each game you are playing.

When you begin a new game you are shown an animated introduction
which leaves you in what is called the god directory. Here you
have five doors to choose from leading to the temples of Poseidon,
Ares, Hephaestus, Hermes and Hades. Here too are the exit to the
Labyrinth guarded by the Minotaur and a door into the Maze of
Madness.

Clicking on one of these doors takes you into the first challenge,
Patchwork.  This action puzzle involves putting together a picture
from 42 blocks which move across the screen - something like a
combination of Tetris and electronic jigsaw puzzles - and you have
a rather distorted monochrome representation of the picture to
guide you. If you get three blocks in the wrong place then the
challenge resets to the last correctly assembled row. The pictures
are quite elaborate and this type of challenge can require a good
deal of experimentation.  It quickly becomes apparent that
practice makes things easier, especially when you try to complete
the penultimate row when your decision time is greatly reduced.

Successful completion of the patchwork action challenge leads on
to a further three challenges in each temple. These can be

Words: Tracer
Shapes: Block
Memory: Arcade

Logic: Scramble, Maze, Maze of Madness, Minotaur Armoury and
Zodiac Tile.

Tracer presents you with a grid of hexagons with letters on them.
You are given the starting letter and must trace out a sentence by
clicking on adjacent letters.  A message area shows how many words
and letters there are in the solution and fills these in as you
go. Sentences all relate to Greek mythology and/or astrology, for
example, 'The water lily and the willow are symbols of Pisces'.

Block is a pentominoes puzzle where you must make up a rectangle
of anywhere between 6 and 15 different shaped pieces. None of
these can be rotated or lifted out of the borders of the
rectangular shape. Sliding them around each other can be a
nightmare and this was the only type of challenge where I finally
had to resort to reducing the level of difficulty at which I was
playing. At Expert level you get no clues as to which piece should
go where; at lower levels you get either one piece or the layout
of the whole lot to guide you.

Arcade consists of a number of astrological symbols floating up
the screen.  Clicking on each of these turns on or off one or more
lights in the background picture. The objective is to select the
right symbols to turn on all the lights.  This is not too
difficult although I found it impossible without making a written
note of what effect clicking on each symbol had.

Scramble shows a zodiac symbol split into eight pieces. You have
to rearrange these by clicking on certain hotspots in the
surrounding picture. Each of these hotspots swaps two of the
pieces. Here again, I found most of these puzzles impossible to do
without writing the results down.

Maze sets out two words, one at the top and one at the bottom of
the screen.  The letters of one of these can be picked up and
dragged through the maze where they are 'morphed' into different
letters according to the symbols they pass over. The objective is
to change all the letters in one word to match those in the other.


Tile is a logic challenge in which you are shown a set of three,
four or five tiles. Choosing one moves this tile to the bottom of
the screen. The god (or goddess) against whom you are playing then
chooses one and moves it to the top. This repeats until you each
have three tiles and they are then scored.  However, the trick is
that you don't know the rules governing the game and what makes a
winning row will differ from game to game. I found that doing some
astrological research helped here.

After solving all the five god challenges you have to get through
the Maze of Madness. This consists of a screen full of zodiac
symbols which you must select in the right order and the clues for
solving this are found somewhere in the Labyrinth.

Completing the Maze of Madness takes you into the goddess
directory. Once again, there are five doors to choose from leading
to the temples of Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter and Eos. The
exit to the Labyrinth is still guarded by the Minotaur and a
further door leads into the Minotaur Armoury.

The first challenge in each of the temples is a patchwork action
challenge and, as with the gods, each leads on to a further three
challenges. These are the same as above and when you have solved
them all you will be in a position to tackle the Minotaur Armoury.

The Minotaur Armoury is a similar challenge to the Maze of Madness
involving the selection of signs of the zodiac in the correct
order.

Finally, there is the Minotaur's Lair challenge. This is simply a
sliding block puzzle consisting of 12 elements which you must
rearrange to move a picture of the minotaur from the outside to
the inside of an octagonal cage.

When you have successfully completed all 47 challenges, clicking
on the game piece at the start will enable you to play any of the
challenges separately without having to work your way to them
through another game.


The documentation contains useful strategy tips for completing
each of the challenges. It also advises you to start off with the
Expert level of difficulty because it is more satisfying to play
and win a difficult game than win one which is too easy. You can
always adjust the difficulty level if you get really stuck. I
agree with this wholeheartedly and it was only after many weeks of
going back to two particular shapes puzzles and still failing to
do them that I selected the slightly easier Advanced option.

When you complete a challenge you are presented with a short
animated sequence of opening doors or gates which helps to give
you the impression of moving through the Labyrinth. After
finishing all of the challenges in a particular temple, a god or
goddess will intervene with a message and provide you with a piece
of the puzzle you need in order to solve the Maze of Madness and
the Minotaur Armoury.

The animation is well done although somewhat cartoon-like and the
graphics are, for VGA, quite lavish. There are a variety of sound

effects and voices throughout the challenges and the whole game is
accompanied by an unobtrusive musical score.

Having waited a long time for Cliff Johnson to produce another
puzzle game, I was, on the whole, disappointed with Labyrinth of
Crete. The overall presentation is, as you would expect, rather
more slick than his earlier production, but the storyline which
provides the framework for the puzzles does not really weave them
as successfully into an engaging tale like Fool's Errand. Also,
the puzzles are too repetitive in nature and there is no climactic
final puzzle which draws everything together like the Map of the
Sun in the author's previous production. There are only half a
dozen puzzles of each type in any one game and, whilst practice
makes perfect, too much of the same thing does become rather
uninteresting. I can see no reason why anybody would want to play
more than a couple of complete games at the most.

Labyrinth of Crete is worth dipping into now and again and I
certainly learned a few things about Greek mythology and astrology
while I was playing it. But Cliff Johnson has produced better
games in the past and I hope he will devise a rather more
interesting one with a greater variety of puzzles in the future.

PC system requirements are:

Windows 3.1 or higher (Will run under Windows 95)
386DX 33MHz processor or higher (486 recommended)
4MB RAM
VGA video adapter
Windows-compatible sound card
Double-speed CD-ROM drive

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In Frobs We Trust!
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