What is a maze and why are they so effective?

A maze is a connected network of winding walls or obstacles that are made to be negotiated to reach a 'goal' or end point.

Mazes within video games can be a very important mechanic. A maze is something that a developer can create and allow the player to figure it out, a lot of games have guidance systems and ways of pushing you through levels or making you go certain ways. A maze is something that is given to the player for them to figure out. It's also a 'safe space' within a game, it's both frustrating and intriguing being lost within a maze, but at all times there is the higher up objective which is to keep the player safe within the games boundaries, no matter how lost you get, you'll never end up somewhere the developer didn't want you to be.
There's a certain 'romanticism' to being lost in a maze, it's the feeling of the unknown. I've only ever come across this in a handful of games but those are games I still play today, for that reason. As the player you want to enter into something unknown to you and get lost within the game world. This allows an escape from the real world.
It's also, therefore, extremely rewarding when a maze is completed within a game. It's your achievement, you completed it by figuring it out. It's that system of giving the player a challenge but in turn they reap greater rewards from having accomplished it themselves.

Mazes have been used in games from the beginning in games such as DOOM and Pac-Man. They're done to create a sense of freedom, a maze has no 'correct' way to tackle it, it's something you have to solve in your own time, whether it takes you a minute of an hour. This was the beauty of Pac-Man, you could figure out your own scheme for tackling the objective of collecting all of the pills whilst avoiding the ghosts. However there was always that one very important mechanic within it, the larger pills in the four corners. I feel these made the game that much better, they were there as a relief, if you were being chased and cornered in, once you collected one of those, the ghosts became edible, you were in control.

I go into this in my game, the mushrooms as the guiding light, your silverlining within the storm.