BinaryMessiah Maize Review

I never thought I would play a game about sentient corn, but that’s what’s great about games, there’s always an idea someone hasn’t done yet. This is a typical adventure game with puzzles and hallways you wander around finding objects with cutscenes thrown in. The game is simple, funny, and has an ending that will leave a smile on your face. The game starts out with small funny hints on what to do like “Pressing Q doesn’t do anything” which helps open up how this game is going to be. As you wander around the maze-like cornfield, you realize you need to pick up highlighted objects. Most of them are for puzzles, but some are added to your folio that adds little story bits. Slowly but surely, you will exhaust each area as there are only so many areas for you to explore and only a few items in each room. I made my way underground to the laboratory where most of the story unfolds. The place is littered with sticky notes of two scientists at each others’ throats and it also helps add to the story of what’s going on. Most of the puzzles were fairly simple as they are highlighted with outlines of what items go where, but the problem here was getting lost all the time. The hallways all look the same and once I searched every new area there was always the problem of missing something. I had to search each room again several times to figure out what I missed, but this is common with adventure games. The game looks really nice, while it won’t smoke your GPU, it uses the Unreal Engine 4 to bring the game to life. The sentient corn characters are funny, and each character is interesting and has personality. I was surprised the developers pulled this off with a play time of about 5-6 hours. The story kept me pushing forward as I wanted to know what happened to all these characters and why I was there. Overall, Maize is a great indie game with funny characters, lots of detail, and a funny story worth seeing through to the end. There isn’t much gameplay here outside of picking up items and wandering hallways, but it’s all for an evening well spent.