Revomaze Obsessions

Revomaze Obsessions are available in Blue, Green and Black flavours. They’re machined in tough plastic to similar tolerances as their Extreme cousins, but they’re significantly cheaper (and lighter). For me, the only downside is that when they’re opened, the core is never fully exposed, so you can’t ever see the actual maze cut into the core, which is a pity.[The pic shows one fully open.]

 

When they were first launched, a couple of different coloured sleeves were available, with the colour of the maze core being represented by the colour of the ‘R’ logo on the end of each core…these days all of the cores (in this style) are black – so pay attention to the colour of the sticker or you won’t know which maze you’re working on.

Some people prefer the Obsessions over the Extremes – I suspect that it’s a matter of taste. They do feel different when navigating through the mazes, but the mechanics of the solution are pretty much identical between them. They are a lot less intimidating to folks trying them out for the first time, and I guess that folks are far more likely to take a punt on a £20 puzzle that they don’t know than they are on a £85(+) puzzle they’ve never played with before. [I also find it a lot easier to part with an Obsession for months on end to let a mate have a bash at solving them than I would parting with one of my Extremes!]

Commercially it makes a lot of sense to have the cheaper versions available – and having Extremes available for more serious puzzlers (or hoarders like myself) covers both ends of the market.

Revomaze Black Extreme

There’s a lovely story behind this Revomaze – it doesn’t form part of the main series of puzzles and was only issued in a limited edition of 20 puzzles.

The story goes that one of the engineers who manufactures bits of these puzzles was chatting to Chris (the designer / MD of Revomaze) and came to realise that Chris would never experience the pleasure of getting to solve one of these puzzles, since he always knew what the maze would look like… he also recognised that up until then (Blue and Green time frames) Chris had stuck to orthogonal mazes … so he issued a challenge to Chris to solve a maze that he’d create specially for him … and thus the first Revomaze Black was born. 

Chris duly opened it and was amazed – firstly by some of the odd things that happened in the maze – there were curves and odd angles everywhere which made it a sod to map out and there were a couple of really tricky little areas to defeat – and secondly when he looked at the core, because staring back at him, writ large, if diagonally around the core, was the name of his company staring back at him …

Recognising that this was too good a puzzle not to release to the puzzling public, Chris commissioned a limited run of 20 available on a first come first served basis.

They sold out quickly.

We’ve all gone through the same process of wonderment seeing the core for the first time and seeing that name staring back at us … and comparing that to our maps and thinking, “No ways did we suspect that was in there …”

These days the Black is only available in the Obsession range – so puzzlers don’t get to see their cores – unless they register an open Black puzzle and read the Open Black Forum where we have posted pictures of the Extreme core – I still get a kick out of folks’ reaction the first time they see what’s happening in there …