Junior Labyrinth is the latest addition to Ravensburger's [page scan/se=0011/sf=category/fi=stockin.asc/ml=10]Labyrinth line of games (also including the original A-maze-ing Labyrinth and the advanced Master Labyrinth). All three games feature the same basic gameplay. Junior Labyrinth is the most accessible for young kids, featuring a 5x5 game board, which is smaller than the other two versions. The game board is a constantly shifting maze -- players take turns sliding a piece in from the edge of the board. This causes all the pieces in that row to slide over and one piece falls off the end. This piece becomes the "pusher piece" of the next player. After adjusting the layout of the board, a player has the opportunity to move his piece through the maze in order to obtain a treasure.

The A-maze-ing Labyrinth has been fairly popular as a kids' game for several years now. The main advantage of teaching kids on this new, smaller Junior Labyrinth board is that it is almost always possible to create a path from your piece to the treasure in one move. This means that children have plenty of opportunity to develop the cerebral skills necessary to juggle the board position mentally and spot these optimal moves. The flipside is that once they have mastered this skill, the game will probably seem too easy. If you think your children are already very skilled at spatial visualization, you may be better off purchasing the A-maze-ing Labyrinth with its larger board.