Revomaze Aqua Review + Revomaze Introduction!

I’ll start with a honest confession.

Since the very start of Puzzle Wanderer I was keenly waiting to write this series of reviews.

About the series of puzzles that largely influenced, and even fuelled, my puzzling career.

Revomaze.

Pssst…There’s a cool surprise in the post if you keep reading.

When I first learned about them, I was 13 years old.

I was a speedcuber back then, amidst perfecting my solve times on a 3×3 rubik’s cube.

One night, after losing myself in the tunnels of the internet in an endless journey,

I stumbled across a very peculiar puzzle –

It was called the ISIS orb.

I was absolutely fascinated from the shine and beauty of the metal orb, intrigued by what could the solution be.

So I went and read some reviews.

Some were very informative, but one review in particular was more so.

“Don’t buy it, get a Revomaze instead”

What is a Revomaze? Sounds cool. Let’s check this out – teen Greg thought to himself.

Unknowingly, he was already down the rabbit hole.

Every place in the internet spoke very highly of Revomaze.

There seemed to be a series of them, and people were saying that they’re astonishingly –

Hard.

So hard in fact, that the EASIEST of the series back then, Blue, was said to take 5 hours on average to solve.

And the HARDEST?

Over 9000!!!

Sorry, couldn’t hold myself.

In seriousness though, Silver, considered the hardest of the original series of 5 puzzles,

took people more than a 100!!! hours.

If the average puzzle would take, say, 1 hour to solve, then the Silver gives 100 times average puzzling value at the least.

That was my thinking.

Fun fact, I was so enthusiastic about them, that I wrote about the mechanism in an assignment we had in English class in school.

So after a while, thanks to my amazing parents, I received the set of Orange and Lime Revomazes.

And so it begins.

The Mechanism

The appeal, beauty and complexity of Revomaze, is the mechanism.

It took me a while to understand it from reading at first, so pay attention to the details.

How it basically works, is you have an aluminum sleeve.

In the sleeve, there is a springed metal pin.

We’ll get back to this pin later, so try to remember it.

Inside the sleeve it looks like there are two metal bolts, one from each side.

In fact, this is actually a rod, also called the shaft, or the core.

Around this shaft there is a cut maze.

Here is when things get interesting.

The maze is cut in different depths, resulting in many layers, or heights, of the maze.

Remember the pin we talked about at the beginning? Good.

That pin navigates the maze. It is static inside the sleeve, while YOU rotate, push and pull the shaft.

And because the pin is springed…

If you navigate the pin from a high path to a lower path, you cannot go back the same way.

This is called a trap, from which your way is back to the start!

All of this may still sound simple to you. Let me clarify –

Everything is completely hidden from you.

You can’t SEE the maze itself, only feel it.

Your goal is to navigate your way through the unknown maze, until the shaft reaches it’s ending position (shown in picture).

Then you can remove the shaft and see with your eyes what exactly was in the maze and how it looks like.

Because of this intricate and unique mechanism, the Revomaze actually incorporates elements of the Maze and Dexterity puzzle types.

There are more than one archetype of maze too. But more on that later.

Revomaze Aqua

Characteristic	Details
Puzzle Type	Maze, Dexterity
Designer	Chris Pitt
Manufacturer	Revomaze
Budget	High
Difficulty	*Hard
Material	Brass, Aluminum & Stainless Steel
Quality for Price	Superb
Puzzling Value for Price	Very Good
Best for	**Champions and Brave Wanderers
Warnings	The easiest Revomaze is by no means easy

Revomaze Aqua is the easiest puzzle in the series.

It was released because the original easiest Revomaze in series, Blue, was reported as too hard as a first puzzle.

Yeah, you heard me right.

The easiest puzzle in the series was too HARD.

Even though I did Aqua after I’ve solved several, much harder Revomazes, there still were some parts that got me thinking.

Let me tell you this –

The maze itself is brilliant.

With some puzzles, my enthusiasm comes from the rush of the solution.

Here the story is different.

It didn’t take a lot of time to open for me…

Around 30 minutes.

But when I opened it, I was really satisfied.

Not of myself,

but of the design.

It has everything you need to understand the mechanics,

Great learning curve inside the maze,

And I’m happy to say that the difficulty is perfect – not easy at all, but not hard enough to make you guys go nuts and never come back.

By the way, here’s my surprise to y’all.

You can use the promo code RevoWanderer to get 5% off of your purchase at the Revomaze shop!

Hope you guys will find it useful.

And if you won’t, then maybe your friends you’ll share it with will 🙂

Also, if you want to talk more Revomaze, hop in to the Revo discord – where you can get insights and help from our friendly community members, share your success or just chat around.

Ok, back on topic!

Here’s a little note about Revomaze’s difficulty levels.

It is hard to categorize Revomazes in normal difficulty metrics, because solving the advanced mazes is close to impossible without some prior experience.

However, by popular opinion, the way to go if you can’t afford all mazes but want to try the Advanced ones, is to at least solve one Beginner and one Intermediate Revomaze.

I started with a relatively hard Revomaze, Orange, and to be honest, it spoiled some of the fun of the easier designs.

But only some.

Experience can’t ruin the ingeniousity of designs.

So from my personal experience – doing them in order is the best decision.

If you really can’t help it and jump straight to Bronze, I won’t blame you.

Verdict

Revomaze Aqua is a great opener for an epic series of puzzles.

It isn’t the puzzle to keep you frustrated for months, but rather –

A very fun design that gives you a glimpse of the good things waiting for you in the Revomaze series.

I’ll see you in the next Revomaze post,

Where in addition to a review of a Revomaze,

I’ll also explain something in the series that confuses puzzlers often.