Sometimes we have to remember the simpler games on the iPhone, and how very entertaining they can be.

Wooden Labyrinth 3D by Elias Pietila is one such game, taking the premise of the original wooden labyrinth game and placing it on the iPhone with cool, new visuals. The first game I ever played on the iPhone was Labyrinth by Codify AB, and I remember being completely mesmerized by the fluid movements the ball would take with every tilt and turn of the iPhone, sending it careening into holes of no return, or bouncing it placidly off wooden walls with a delicate and soft, whisper of a tilt from my wrist. In its original version, Labyrinth showed a tiny black ball, with thin wooden walls and thin pathways that effectively reminded me of the aerial standpoint one takes with a big, physical box of the game (I had one of those old ones, with knobs to tilt it this way and that). With newer updates, however, the game made the ball larger, more silver and accented, and the wood took on a lighter and more artificial feel. Sometimes, I even think the gameplay zone may have been reduced.

With Labyrinth 3D, I grew a renewed interest in the game, because it improved upon other iPhone labyrinth games with its three dimensional movements that mime the wooden gameboard – if you had you been using it. As you tilt to move the ball, rather than having the walls be static, immobile, the walls shift angles in correlation with the way you tilt the iPhone, giving you the illusion of playing the physical board. I guess you could say it adds “dimension” to the game (oh haha, I know). Aside from the new, pseudo 3D visuals, and some romantic, mind hazing Spanish guitar music, gameplay is much the same – I mean, how much can you really delineate from the original game? You view the wooden board from above, and move your ball around, avoiding the holes that drop you below, so you may safely plop your marble ball into the checkered end hole to the next level. What’s neat is whenever a ball falls through a hole, you glimpse a sight of it as it rolls to the other side, its ghostly image just barely visible through other holes.

Whenever a level is completed, your stats are shown in a simple text message – your time, your streak of endless levels beaten, and your endless average time, with a prompt to either play the level again (you competitive speed freak, you), or to play the next level. I was particularly happy with a speed of 12 seconds for one level, but that kind of quickness is hard to achieve in the later levels, where more holes abound, in stickier situations. Generally, if you’re a speed demon, have a lead foot, get monthly speeding tickets in your flashy red car, it’s best to think in terms of angles: much like a pool table, the angle at which you hit the ball has a grand effect on your ability to predict its future movement. It’s all geometry, folks. However, slowness and a steady hand does benefit you later in the game when holes are placed in areas where a speedy ricochet off the wall will land you in a hole and back to the beginning. So long as you don’t have delirium tremens, Parkinson’s, or just a bad case of the shakes, your steady hand will deftly stop your ball mid-flight and turn it left and right in swooping lines to strategically avoid black holes. Any game that requires this kind of physical and mental concentration is engaging enough to be consuming.

The free version whetted my appetite just fine, but if you’re in need of more and more levels, then the paid version is not too bad at $2.99. Besides, buying the full version might rid you of the annoying paid advertisements that interrupt your endless playing time every so often with men flexing their ripped muscles. Don’t worry, you can have them too. Other than that, the Spanish guitar does get a bit cheesy after awhile – I started picturing hairy-chested men with roses in their mouths – but it’s nothing a simple tinkering with the volume controls or silent button can’t cure. Next time the Bay Bridge closes down and remains closed down for an entire Halloween weekend, and you’re stuck in two hour traffic for a normally less than one hour route, just whip out labyrinth and have the satisfaction of navigating tricky situations to an actual end goal.