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Wonderland
 Wonderland is an easy to manage maze-based game for everyone. Well it's not always that easy because there are obstacles to overcome along the way. It is aptly described as a action/puzzle game by the developers as it demands a good serving of strategic thinking mixed in with some quick thinking and hand eye coordination.
The game is in 3D and is bright, colourful and irresistible. The idea is to negotiate the mazes and collect tokens. Each game has a different number of essential tokens that must be collected to open the exit to the next level, and there are bonus tokens as well to add to your score.
You have either one or two characters (Stinky and Loof) to guide around. When they appear together you can be sure they need to work together to solve the problems. There are buttons and blocks and teleports, and all sorts of things to make life dangerous such as slippery ice and electric fields. Some pathways disappear when traversed; and water, sky or lava may block the way. Some buttons open pathways for a limited time, some need only be activated just once, whilst still more must be continually pressed by a block (or one of the characters) to make them work. Other blocks might just need to be pushed out of the way but they can also be pushed into water to make bridges. If they are of the wooden variety, however, they'll burn up in lava. Only metal blocks work here and you need two of them to progress one step.
 Added to this there are some trickier 'characters' roaming around. Scouges are bright pink cannons that will send you back home if you're not careful. The 'Coily' characters jump around and also ruin your day, as do the slow moving Kabooms that go off with a bang when you meet. Kabooms can also destroy obstacles and open pathways if trapped in the right place. Z-Bots are another story. They zap around and split second timing is needed to avoid them. Z-Bots make the play quite hectic and this urgency is added to by a time limit that is placed on each game. Fool around for too long and you're timed out and it's back to the start.
There's a lot of fun to be had here for puzzle fans who like their puzzling mixed with a bit of frenzied activity. There are 10 levels and each level comprises a number of games, making around 85 games in all. They get progressively more difficult as more 'obstacles' are inserted, and with each new obstacle an instruction caption can be activated to get a hint about it's nature and how to deal with it. There is also a simple 'playground' level to occupy younger players and get them used to the basics.
Wonderland is a game that all the family can join in and have a go. You can play together and discuss tactics or you can each have a game going in your own name. Each separate game is recorded on the main menu screen along with the players' scores, which are calculated taking into account the time it takes to solve a game, and the number of bonus tokens collected. You can replay games and improve your score and, of course, keep ahead of other players.
I've been having some fun with Wonderland trying to 'beat' those tougher games that eluded me, although I have wished sometimes that the time limit was limitless. Kids will love the frenetic feel but mature players might want to take some more time as I did. Although there's unfortunately no time for sipping wine to get the cogs working, you can skip a game if it looks too daunting or if you've repeated it too many times. You can also download the demo from Midnight Synergy and play a few levels to see if it might be for you. This is my advice; try it, there are some fun challenges. J
Return To Wonderland now released. A stand-alone expansion with many new gameplay elements, 100 (!) new levels, and a level editor.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 2003.
All rights reserved.
System Requirements:
(Minimum) Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP, P-200 Mhz+, 32MB+, DirectX v7+, DirectX compatible 3D-Video card.
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