Do you like puzzles? Do you like free games? Do you like free puzzle games that are charming and idiosyncratic? Then you’ll love 20 Small Mazes, a game that is just 20 small mazes. As the Steam store page says, they’re good mazes, though. It’s out on February the 16th from FLEB, which seems to be just one guy who really likes puzzles and making puzzles. I wholly support him.
There’s not a lot to say about 20 Small Mazes, partly because most of the concept is contained in the title, and partly because most of the concept isn’t contained in the title and I don’t want to spoil it. Yes, you are presented with 20 small mazes, each on a different bit of paper in a vast collage of mazes. You can pull them around and move them out of the way and tackle them in a different order. By using your WASD keys, you navigate the mazes. Like the meerkat says: simples.
Except! One of the first mazes can be folded down the middle to completely change the shape of the maze (like when you fold money to make the Queen look stupid). In another maze, the exit is behind a vault door, and you have to find a four digit code in the maze itself before you can open it. Another maze needs you to find two halves of a treasure map to know where to dig to find the door. One is called “my six year-old drew this maze” and it’s in felt tip and is labelled with things like “a spiral you can get trapped in”. Basically, none of the 20 mazes is just a regular maze. I love it.
![Some more mazes from 20 Small Mazes. One is a maze split into jigsaw pieces you must put together. Behind that is a maze drawn by the developer's child.](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/20-small-mazes-2.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
20 Small Mazes got an hon. menchie at this year’s IGF for excellence in design. Richly deserved. I don’t think I have 20 ideas this original in my entire body. I rally want to emphasise that this is extremely good, and I sort of can’t believe it’s free. It’s surely too good to be true, in fact, so let’s double check the small print to make sure this isn’t some sort of scam to harvest our data and/or souls, and then otherwise just enjoy 20 Small Mazes to its fullest on February 16th.