How does Maze Escape work?
Start on the rug in the top left corner and move the torch bearer to the glowing door in the bottom right corner. The maze is generated again every time you open a board, so there is nothing to memorize, and because there is exactly one route between any two cells, crossing off dead ends one by one always leaves the way out.
Three sizes are available: Small 11×11, Medium 21×21 and Large 31×31. The numbers count walls as well, so the walkable grid is 5×5, 10×10 and 15×15, and the shortest route through a medium maze is usually somewhere between 30 and 60 steps. Every step leaves a footprint so you can see where you have been, while the time and step counter run at the top.
What modes are there?
Classic, Fog, Keys, Time trial and Daily. Classic shows the whole maze, Fog shows only two cells around the torch, Keys makes you collect three keys to open three doors, Time trial chains five mazes and adds up the time, and Daily gives everyone the same 21×21 maze each day.
| Mode | What you see | How it ends |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | The whole maze | Reach the glowing door |
| Fog | Two cells inside the torchlight, visited cells dimly remembered | Reach the glowing door |
| Keys | The whole maze with three doors and three keys | Open the doors with keys and reach the door |
| Time trial | The whole maze | Escape five mazes in a row |
| Daily | The whole maze (21×21) | Reach the glowing door. A new maze every day |
In Fog mode everything beyond two cells is pitch black, so each corner reveals new corridors. Cells you have walked stay in a bluish haze that guides you when you backtrack, and the glowing door shimmers faintly from afar to give a rough direction.
How are the doors and keys placed in Keys mode?
The three doors sit on the solution path in order, and the three keys are hidden at the ends of dead ends in the area in front of each door. Any key opens any door, and opening a door uses up one key.
A key is always reachable before the first door, passing that door opens up the area that holds the second key, and so on, and a board only starts once it has been checked to be solvable. The keys are deliberately placed off the solution path, so a detour to fetch one and come back can be half of your total steps. The key counter at the top shows the keys in hand and the doors still locked.
Why are there so many ways to move?
Besides one cell per arrow key, there is Shift + arrow to run to the wall, a swipe that runs to the next fork on its own, a joystick that keeps moving while held, and path drawing, where you drag the explorer along the route you want. Steps are counted the same way whichever you use.
- Arrow keys / WASD: one cell. Walking into a wall shakes the screen a little and stops.
- Shift + arrow: run straight until a wall. Fast for long corridors.
- Swipe: set off in the swiped direction, follow the corridor around its bends and stop at the next fork or dead end. It also stops in front of keys and doors.
- Joystick: appears at the bottom left on touch screens. Keeps stepping in the tilted direction.
- Path drawing: press on the explorer and drag along the route. The explorer walks exactly what you drew, and strokes across walls are ignored.
- Z or the Back button: retraces your footprints to the previous fork. Those steps count too.
- H or the Hint button: shows the correct route to the next fork as a yellow dotted line for five seconds. Hints are recorded in the result.
How are the mazes generated?
Each board picks one of four methods, recursive backtracking, Prim, Kruskal or hunt and kill, and carves a perfect maze. A perfect maze has no loops, so there is exactly one route between any two cells.
| Method | Looks like | Feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Recursive backtracking | Long winding corridors with few forks | One wrong turn costs a long walk back |
| Prim | Many short branches in every direction | Frequent forks and lots of dead ends to check |
| Kruskal | Evenly tangled mid length passages | Hard to tell which branch is right |
| Hunt and kill | Long alleys lined up side by side | Quick once you read the overall flow |
When you finish, light sweeps over the whole maze and your trail is drawn in light blue with the shortest route in gold dashes, so you see at once where you wandered. Efficiency on the result card is the shortest step count divided by your actual steps.
Tips for getting out faster
- Read the big walls near the exit first. In Classic mode, tracing backwards from the exit with your eyes before you move crosses off two or three forks.
- Drop dead ends at the entrance. If a branch visibly closes within a few cells, simply not entering it saves a lot of steps.
- Use the one hand rule in Fog. In a perfect maze, keeping one hand on a wall and following it always brings you to the exit eventually. Worth trying when you are lost instead of backtracking.
- Grab the nearest key. Any key opens any door, so collect them in the order that costs the fewest steps, not door order.
- Use Shift and swipes in the time trial. Tapping one cell at a time down a long corridor leaks seconds.
How are records kept?
The fastest time for each mode and size is saved in this browser. Each mode button on the title screen shows the best time for the selected size, and beating it brings a new best banner and confetti on the result card.
The daily maze records one completion per day for the attendance calendar, and Share result builds a card with your time, steps and efficiency. The wall style can be switched between hedge and brick on the title screen, and the choice is remembered.
Records stay in this browser only and are never sent to a server. Clearing browser data removes them.