Maze War

1974
Developer: Steve Colley


Maze War (also known as The Maze Game, Maze Wars, Mazewar, or simply Maze) is a historically significant video game.

Maze War originated or disseminated a number of concepts used in thousands of games to follow, and is considered one of the earliest, if not the earliest, examples of a first-person shooter.

Gameplay is simple by later standards. Players wander around a maze, being capable of moving backward or forwards, and turning right or left, and peeking through doorways. Other players are seen as eyeballs. When a player sees another player, they can shoot them. Players gain points for shooting other players, and lose them for being shot. Occasionally in some versions, a duck also appears in the passage.

Maze alumni
Steve Colley subsequently worked on very early versions of Mars rover technology for NASA, and found that his 3D perspective work on Maze Wars was useful for this project.[1]