Pokemon, being such a massive franchise, of course has a Labyrinth version. It just makes sense to have all of those little, iconic pocket monsters littered all around a map, waiting for you to scoop them up one-after-another. Pokemon Labyrinth is a game all about sliding tiles and planning your next route.
In Pokemon Labyrinth, the map is made up of a series of tiles that are placed out randomly across a board that features a bunch of fixed-space tiles. Each of the up-to-four players get a Pokemon Starter character, This will be the Pokemon you are playing as you travel across the land. You will also get a number of Pokeball tokens, which have Pokemon on the back. You don’t want to show these off to other players and instead keep them secret, only looking at the top Pokemon on the pile.
On your turn, you will be trying to get your Pokemon character to the Pokemon you want to capture. This is done by following the paths that are set out on the map. However, you can only follow an uninterrupted path. To change and manipulate the paths, you will need to select a row with an arrow on it, and then move the entire row across, knocking a tile at the edge off. You then place the extra tile, which is always the last one knocked off, in the new spot you’ve just created. You can then move your character on the path that they’re on, to whatever stopping point you want them to end on.
Pokemon Labyrinth is a very simple game once you start thinking in terms of the next few moves. If you end up knocking a Pokemon character off the edge of the map, they will go back onto the tile you have just placed, appearing on the other side of the world to where they were. This can also be used in a lot of different strategies, giving you a bit of an advantage. Once you have captured the Pokemon you were after, you can then flip over your next Pokeball Token and go after the next one. The game ends when you have captured all of the Pokemon tokens from your Pokeball.
This is a game that can take quite a chunk of time, but the movement and building paths do keep your attention and you constantly need to think about what the next player is doing. The tiles themselves sometimes get a bit stuck, but moving them slowly will help you get the hang of which ones are stuck!
Pokemon Labyrinth is a great game for those who are Pokemon fans and non-fans alike. You can purchase a copy on Amazon.
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