Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Sultan’s Maze starts with a clean, compelling bit of adventuring: you enter Hampton Court’s maze, hunt down the Sultan’s stolen jewels, then try to carry them back outside. There is no need to decipher a grand mission statement. You are lost in a dangerous place, you have something valuable to find, and getting out matters as much as getting in.

The first-person perspective gives this simple setup some bite. A maze is already built to make you doubt your memory, and seeing it from inside rather than from above makes each turn feel more personal. Early on, you can enjoy the small thrill of pushing onward because the next passage might bring you closer to the jewels—or merely deeper into trouble.

Its age shows in the basic nature of the experience. This is a primitive 3D adventure, with real-time pressure coming from the risk of exhaustion as well as the threat roaming the maze. The ghost of the murdered bodyguard is more than background lore: he gives your return trip a sense of danger, turning success into something you still have to protect.

Frustration arrives when navigation stops feeling tense and starts feeling circular. If you enjoy mapping spaces in your head, or simply have the patience to learn a maze through repetition, that is the core challenge. If you need frequent new ideas, varied puzzles, or a gentler sense of progress, Sultan’s Maze can feel thin and punishing.

Graphics

The game shows the maze from a first-person viewpoint, an ambitious choice for a 1984 Amstrad CPC adventure. The point is not decorative detail; it is the immediate sensation of standing in the labyrinth and having to choose a direction without a helpful overhead view.

Story

The story is a compact ghost tale built around a useful motivation. A Sultan was robbed while visiting Hampton Court’s maze, his bodyguard pursued the thieves and was murdered on the way back, and now an adventurer has taken on the job of recovering the jewels.

That backstory does more than decorate the box. The bodyguard’s ghost gives the maze a lingering threat, and the stolen treasure gives every stretch of wandering a concrete purpose. You are not exploring for its own sake; you are trying to finish an old, deadly errand.

Do not expect a broad adventure narrative with a cast of characters or a chain of dramatic scenes. The story works as a frame for the maze: brief, eerie, and direct. It gives the game a little more atmosphere than an abstract labyrinth, even if the actual journey remains centered on navigation and survival.

Overall Experience

Sultan’s Maze is a modest but historically interesting piece of Amstrad CPC adventuring. Its strongest idea is also its whole identity: a first-person maze crawl where getting turned around is not an inconvenience on the way to the game, but the game itself.

There is a particular kind of satisfaction in learning hostile corridors well enough to make a successful run. The jewels supply a clear finish line, while exhaustion and the ghost ensure that reaching them does not automatically make you safe. When that tension is working, the game feels like a stern little test of nerve and memory.

Still, this is not a maze for everyone. The stripped-back design and likelihood of retracing your steps can make it feel more like an endurance exercise than an adventure. Give it a chance if you have affection for early home-computer experiments or want a concentrated, old-school labyrinth challenge. Everyone else may admire the premise more than they enjoy the journey.

Retro Replay Score

5.5/10