Tower of Logic

After I invented GoGetter, Hide & Seek and Camouflage for Smart Games, I really wanted to do something different. After all those flat piece puzzles, I wanted to do a 3D game. I ended up creating a maze that is played on both sides of a building that is on fire. The advantage of it being double sided is not only that it is more original than existing horizontal mazes, but also that it adds a new element, the fact that you never have a complete overview of the challenge.  Because you have 2 sides, you can only see one side at a time. So, to solve this puzzle, you don't just need logic skills but you also need your memory.

THE MIND MADE MAZE

The 2-sided element made it possible for me to play tricks on the players. For most of my concepts I get help from Saskia, a computer program writer, to calculate the number of valid solutions. But in this case, that would not have worked, because then most of the challenges generated would not have been very interesting. So the challenges in this game are really handmade (or, to describe it better, mind made). The only downside to this is that I can't play the game myself, because I can still remember everything I did, including the ploys I used when I wanted to send a player off in the wrong direction. Maybe in 10 years or so …

When testing the game out, most players went wrong where I intended them to go wrong (ha ha), except for my wife. She knows me pretty well, and she said that the puzzle is not so difficult if you always take the path that makes no sense. It's a little bit like Agatha Christie’s books: the one who cannot have done it is probably the one who actually did do it.

RUSH TOWER

The working title for this game was “Rush Tower”. I think this kind of wordplay is fun, but as another puzzle company might have seen things differently, we decided to go for a slightly more boring name. In the USA the game was also sold by Educational Insights as “Fire Escape”. Although reviews and feedback from players have always been positive, this item has never been a best seller (probably because it’s got a much higher price). So if you are into mazes and you’d like to try something rather special, you’d better rush to find one soon, because the game is no longer in production at the moment.

UPDATE MAY 2014:

There is now a digital version of Tower of Logic on SmartGamesLive.com with 24 new and easier challenges. And now the circle is closed. The original game was partly inspired on video games and now gets a second life as one.