20 Small Mazes is thoroughly playful with the form.
All mazes exist contemporaneously onscreen in varying layers. You can click one to bring it to the top and drag it around with a delay between your mouse and the window following. This brought to the foreground recessed memories of older, slower desktops and doing the same action out of a simple pleasure of trying to outrun the computer.
Some mazes contain familiar rules but all mess with how a maze can work when freed from limiting physical space. One is a child’s drawing and mini-adventure game requiring you to find items to unlock forward progression and is aptly named, “My Six Year-Old Drew This Maze.” My great nemesis the slide puzzle appears, with an additional requirement of navigating the cursor around hallways contained within each slide that connect and cut each other off as you slide them about. One requires you to find a combination for a lock on the exit, another has you digging for treasure, another inverts the premise as you move the maze itself around two fixed points. You get it.
It is a simple pleasure to solve a series of simple but creative and expressive puzzles.