To be honest, I was cleaning up the old photos on my phone two days ago, and suddenly I saw a screen shot taken with a Nokia 5230. It was the maze interface of "Maze War". At that moment, many memories came flooding back.
I'm not going to brag about it, but this game was really considered a work of conscience back then. Made by Xiamen Weihu Network, it's free and has no in-app purchases. In an era when everyone calls for “cracked version”, it's a clean slate 👴
I remember when I first got my mobile phone, I started looking for new games after playing "Snake" and "Skyscraper". I accidentally saw someone recommending "Maze War" on the forum, saying "Maze plus RPG, you can play it all afternoon." I downloaded and installed it directly, and it was really out of control.
The setting of the game is simple: the world of Middle-earth is messed up by monsters, and you play the hero and go through the maze to fight monsters. Time is very tight, and there are forks and dead ends in the maze. Sometimes if you make a mistake, you will fall into the sea and start over again. To be honest, this kind of punishment is quite harsh, but it makes people more interested in it. Every time they make a mistake, they will remember the route.
The design of the monster seemed quite thoughtful at the time. There is a big boss at the end of each maze. You must first use minions to accumulate resources, and then find the weak points to fight. There was no guide at that time, so I had to figure it out on my own. I remember that I was stuck on a fire dragon level for three days, and finally found out that I had to make it breathe fire and burn down a specific wall to get the weapon. That sense of accomplishment cannot be compared to the current mobile game krypton gold card draw 😌
Looking back now, the picture quality of this game is really bad, I can almost count the pixels. But the gameplay is not outdated at all: plane maze, strategic positioning, time limit, plus a little bit of snake-style micro-management for collecting gold coins. I miss the pure gaming experience of turning on my phone, with no pop-ups, no monthly cards, and no physical limitations.
Around 2010, our small domestic factories could still produce such clean games. Unlike now, when you open the ranking list, the screen is full of carousel draws, sign-in gift packages, and VIP privileges. Sometimes we really don't know whether we are playing games or the games are playing us.
"Maze War" is probably hard to find now, and I don't know where to download the installation package for Symbian 5.0. But if you see it somewhere, don't hesitate to put it on and play for half an hour. The kind of joy that is focused on getting through levels will take you back to the era when mobile phones were still sliders and 30M of monthly traffic was a huge sum of money.
Suddenly I miss the days of blindly pressing the keyboard under the desk to fight monsters 🧭