Origins Hall Of Famer Max J. Kobbert On Almost 40 Years Of Labyrinth

Summary

• Labyrinth, a classic board game, remains popular due to its simple yet captivating gameplay that has inspired designers worldwide.
• Designer Max Kobbert's expertise in Cognitive Psychology influenced the game's design, focusing on visual thinking and spatial imagination.
• Kobbert's approach to game design emphasizes simplicity in rules and complexity in gameplay, contributing to Labyrinth's enduring appeal.

After your Scrabbles, Monopolies, and Catans, one of the most enduring board games today has to be Labyrinth. Originally launched back in 1986, its simple but endlessly repeatable format has allowed it to benefit from decades of sequels, remakes, and licensed editions, while also inspiring swathes of designers in the process.

If you’ve never played it, Labyrinth is incredibly simple to understand. Your goal is to find treasure and escape from the Labyrinth, all while constantly shifting the walls around to trap and disorientate your opponents. Over the years it’s had everything from 3D to circular versions, but the core concept has always been the same.

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This year, Labyrinth’s designer Max Kobbert is being inducted into the Origin Games Convention’s Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Magic: The Gathering’s Richard Garfield, Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith, and Dungeons & Dragons’ Gary Gygax in a lineup of tabletop legends. We had a chat with Kobbert about his career, and how pushing tiles spawned a decades-long legacy.

“I’ve always been fascinated by mazes and labyrinths,” said Kobber on the original inspiration for Labyrinth, “Although it saddened me when the labyrinth was solved; it loses its intrigue. In the early 1980s, inspired by the Rubik’s Cube, I invented several three-dimensional puzzles, and had them patented. None of those quite took off… until I started to consider two-dimensional, changeable puzzles. This gave me the idea of moving square tiles between a grid of fixed tiles, which combines perfectly with my idea to create an ever-changing labyrinth… and the a-MAZE-ing Labyrinth was born!”.

The A-MAZE-ing Labyrinth was Labyrinth’s original name.

Psychology And Simplicty

Kobbert isn’t just a game designer, though; he’s also a doctor of Cognitive Psychology with a particular interest in perception, and taught art didactics and psychology at the Dusseldorf Art Department until 2009. His expertise led directly into the design of Labyrinth: “As a psychologist, perception and visual perception are my specialty, which certainly impacts my work as a game designer. Labyrinth is a challenge for visual thinking and spatial imagination.”

Kobbert’s game designs are noteworthy for their simplicity. In Labyrinth, all you do is push tiles into the grid to move the rows and columns around, and even the more advanced Master Labyrinth, which lets you plan your moves much farther ahead, follows the same basic formula.

“I learned a lot from Labyrinth’s short and easy rules, which allow any newcomer to start playing right away,” Kobbert says, reflecting on how Labyrinth has informed his later designs, “I’ve applied this to all [my] other games, as I don’t like games with long and complicated rules. The complexity of a game must arise from the course of the game and the depth of play… not from the complexity of a rulebook”.

While this simplicity certainly helped cement Labyrinth’s popularity, it’s also received numerous new editions over the years that helped shake things up. Ocean Labyrinth added extra rules to the tiles you push out of the labyrinth, Secret Labyrinth turned the labyrinth into a big circle and tried to introduce combat, and there have even been licensed editions featuring Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, and Star Wars.

There's even a life-size Labyrinth at the Ravensburger Spieleland theme park in Germany.

But it’s the original that Kobbert remembers most fondly. “The original Labyrinth from 1986 remains my favorite for playing with the whole family. Children are particularly adept at visual thinking, and classic Labyrinth is suitable for all generations.”

However, Master Labyrinth and its slightly beefed-up complexity does still hold a place in his heart too, “If players are all ages ten and up, then my favourite is Master Labyrinth from 1991. Especially in two-player games, Master Labyrinth can be nearly as complex and strategic as chess!”

Labyrinth Helped Make Tabletop Games More Accessible

Having someone as experienced as Kobbert still actively involved with the tabletop gaming industry is important. Games have gotten bigger and more complex over the years, but Kobbert’s contributions go back to some of the most fundamental in the genre, like different editions for different ages, like 1995’s Junior Labyrinth.

“When I first worked with Ravensburger to adapt Labyrinth for different target groups, that principle was truly novel – a new experiment. Since then, other publishers have created families of games with many different iterations. Board game offerings are increasingly diverse in all aspects, from prices to gameplay to themes.”

The complexity of a game must arise from the course of the game and the depth of play.

On being included in the Origin Hall of Fame, Kobbert is just as contemplative as he is about game design: “I am overjoyed and deeply proud that Labyrinth is being inducted into the Hall of Fame. A ‘Game of the Year’ would be its own prize, but joining the Hall of Fame means a game has proven itself across many years or decades. The honor of my invention joining the Hall of Fame is particularly meaningful to me.”

But Kobbert isn’t just looking back, he’s also gearing up to hopefully keep Labyrinth going for decades to come. “I am pleased that a remake of Master Labyrinth will be released this fall after having been discontinued since 2000. I have a few other Labyrinth ideas hidden in the vaults of Ravensburger, which you’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, my daughter, Antje, also is developing new ideas forLabyrinth. I am sure that Labyrinth will live on beyond me.”

Labyrinth

Labyrinth is a classic game of speed, with players competing to collect treasures in the midst of a winding maze.