Maziacs is a...maze game created by Don Priestley as a sequel to his Mazogs, which was a ZX81 game. In Maziacs you control a sword-wielding guy who needs to find the treasure at the end of a maze and bring it back to your starting point. Standing in your way are the maziacs, monsters you need to either avoid or kill with your sword, but the twist is that your sword is only good for one fight. After being used, you have to find another sword, or you could gamble on your ability to kill a monster without it but there's a good chance they'll kill you instead. And if you've found the treasure, you can only carry it, so if you need to fight, you need to find a sword, pick it up, kill the monster, then go back and get the treasure. Oh, and you need to find the limited quantities of food to keep yourself going.
The other main feature of the game is the prisoners. You occasionally encounter men chained up in the maze and when you free them, they repay you by giving you directions to the treasure or the starting point if you're lugging the treasure with you. This takes the form of the path lighting up for a brief time.
Graphically, it's a pretty basic game, as expected from a game with ZX81 origins, but the cartoon dust cloud that erupts when you get in a fight is a fun touch.
Maziacs isn't very hard and I cleared the highest difficulty within 20 minutes of first starting the game, but the thing is that it's a score-oriented game that you're meant to replay and it is a fast and fun piece of work.
