MindMaze

In any pre-2008 version of Microsoft Encarta, press ctrl z to start MindMaze.

Questions

The player can choose to answer questions in one or all of nine subjects:

• Life Science
• Geography
• History
• Physical Science
• Social Science
• Religion and Philosophy
• Art, Language and Literature
• Performing Arts
• Sports, Hobbies and Pets

Furthermore, the player can choose from four difficulty levels. Interestingly, the lower level history questions seem to be almost entirely about the United States, suggesting that Microsoft expected (quite rightly) that the majority of its end-users would have been educated in American schools.

Example Questions

Difficulty 1:
Science dealing with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results produced by these forces.

• Sociobiology
• Physics
• Geology
• Chemistry

Difficulty 2:
Special letter or document bearing the pope's own seal.

• Reliquary
• Mantra
• Bull
  
• Papyrus

Difficulty 3:
Dutch-born Swiss scientist who discovered basic principles of fluid behaviour.

• Bernoulli, Daniel
• Debye, Peter Joseph Wilhelm
• Bessel, Friedrich Wilhelm
• Fokker, Antony Herman Gerard

Difficulty 4:
Chinese gambling game, as well as a Western card game.

• Fan Tan
• Pinochle
• Hearts
• Mah Jongg
  

Aim

The aim of MindMaze is to lift the curse that has befallen a historically-questionable medieval castle by answering questions. Each floor of the castle is a maze, where the end-point is the next set of stairs upwards. The direction in which to move, by clicking on doors, would be entirely random, were it not for the presence of 'torches' which display the entire maze for a brief period of time. When moving through a door, a question is asked on the chosen subject (see above), worth a certain number of points depending on the difficulty level. Four choices are given, and the player has two attempts, resulting in a 50/50 chance of getting a question right simply by guessing. The longer the player takes to answer a question, the less points they receive. Once 20000 points are reached, the next staircase will lead to the King's chamber, where you are invited to rule over the Kingdom after the monarch dies.