Featured: ChessMaze Game: Find the Path Out of Every Labyrinth
Start in the top left, reach the exit in the bottom right. Sixty numbered stages grow from a 7x7 grid to a 31x31 maze puzzle, endless mode builds a fresh maze whenever you want one, and you can race friends through the identical maze.
How to play the maze game
Find the entrance
Your marker starts in the top left corner of the grid and the green exit sits in the bottom right. Every maze is solvable, so there is always a route from one to the other.
Move through the gaps
Arrow keys or WASD, a swipe, or a tap on the square next to you. Tap further along a corridor with no turnings and your marker walks there. Walls simply stop you, nothing breaks.
Watch your trail
Every square you walk through is shaded, so you can see where you have already been. That trail is the fastest way to spot the loop you have just gone round twice.
Chase three stars
Each stage has a par, which is the shortest possible route. Match par for three stars, stay inside 1.35 times par for two, and finish at all for one. A hint caps the stage at one star.
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A maze puzzle that grows one row at a time
Most maze games online give you one size of grid and leave it there. This one gives you sixty, and it changes two things as you climb. The grid grows from 7x7 up to 31x31, so the route gets longer, and from stage 14 the game starts removing dead ends, which puts loops into the maze. Loops are what turn a simple maze into a hard maze, because a dead end is information and a loop is not.
Every stage is built from its own number, so stage 23 is the same maze for you, for your friend and for anyone who opens the page next year. Nothing is random until you reach endless mode, which means a three star run is a real result that you can go back and beat.
The board is drawn on a canvas rather than built out of page elements, which is why a 31x31 maze of 961 cells still scrolls smoothly on a phone and redraws instantly when you turn the device sideways. The whole labyrinth is always on screen at once. There is no panning and no zooming to do.
Your progress, your stars and your daily streak live in your own browser. There is no account, no download and no server keeping score, so clearing your browser data clears your stages too.
The 60 stage progression
| Stages | Grid | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | 7x7 | A perfect maze with no loops. Short enough to see the whole route before you move. |
| 4 to 8 | 9x9 | Still no loops. Long corridors start to appear, so dead ends cost you real moves. |
| 9 to 13 | 11x11 | The last of the loop free mazes. Wall following still works perfectly here. |
| 14 to 18 | 13x13 | The first dead ends are removed, so the first loops appear. |
| 19 to 23 | 15x15 | Roughly one dead end in thirty is gone. A wall follower can now get caught. |
| 24 to 32 | 17x17 to 19x19 | Around one dead end in eight is gone, and junctions on the route multiply. |
| 33 to 42 | 21x21 to 23x23 | One dead end in five is gone. Dead end filling stops being enough on its own. |
| 43 to 52 | 25x25 to 27x27 | Nearly a third of the dead ends are gone. Routes of 150 moves and more. |
| 53 to 60 | 29x29 to 31x31 | Two fifths of the dead ends are gone. The hardest maze the game builds. |
Stage 60 is the top of the ladder because a grid bigger than 31x31 stops being readable on a phone and heavier braiding turns a maze into an open field. After that, endless mode takes over.
The four ways to play
60 stages: the main ladder
The default mode and the heart of the game. Sixty mazes in a fixed order, each one unlocked by finishing the one before it, each one worth up to three stars. Because the par for a stage is the true shortest route and not an estimate, three stars means you walked the best possible path with no wasted step. Stage 1 is twenty six moves. Stage 60 can be well over a hundred.
Endless: a fresh maze whenever you want one
Four levels, seeded from the clock, so you never see the same maze twice. Easy is 9x9 with no loops, Medium is 15x15 with a few, Hard is 21x21, and Expert is 29x29 with roughly a third of its dead ends removed. Endless keeps your best move count for each level, which is a fairer target than a timer when every maze is different.
Daily maze: one labyrinth for everybody
A single maze built from the date in UTC, so every player anywhere gets the same labyrinth game on the same day. Solve it to keep your run of days going. A countdown on the home screen shows when the next one arrives, and a day you miss resets the streak rather than hiding it.
Race friends: first to the exit wins
Create a room, share the six character code or the invite link, and up to five friends can join. The host chooses the size and then sends one number, not a grid, and every browser builds the identical maze from it. You can watch how far each player has got while you are still walking, and the first marker to reach the exit takes the race.
The host runs the race. Your browser reports only where your marker is, and the host checks that against its own clock before it accepts anything. Nobody can report a finish they have not walked, because the host knows the shortest route and knows how long the fastest possible run would have taken.
How to solve a maze properly
Guessing works on a 7x7 grid. It stops working somewhere around stage 20, and the players who get three stars on the big mazes are using methods that have been written down for over a century. Here are the four that matter, including the one that quietly breaks in this game and why.
Wall following, and when it is safe
Put one hand on a wall, keep it there, and walk. Never lift it, and take every turn the wall takes. On a perfect maze, which is a maze with exactly one route between any two points and therefore no loops, this is guaranteed to work: all the walls form one single connected piece, and tracing the edge of one piece eventually passes every cell in the maze. Stages 1 to 13 in this game are perfect mazes, so wall following will always get you out. It is slow, because you walk into every dead end on that side, but it cannot fail.
Why a braided maze defeats it
From stage 14 the game begins braiding the maze, which means opening one extra wall at a dead end so the dead end disappears. That single change creates a loop, and a loop means the wall around it is no longer joined to the outside. It has become an island. If you put your hand on an island you will walk round it and arrive back where you started, for ever, and the exit can be on the other side of that island the whole time. This is the honest reason the later stages feel so different: the method that carried you through the first dozen stages has stopped being a method at all. By stage 60 two fifths of the dead ends are gone, so islands are everywhere.
Dead end filling
This one runs backwards. Instead of looking for the route, delete everything that cannot be the route. Find any cell with exactly one opening, which is a dead end, and mentally block it off. That often turns its neighbour into a new dead end, so block that too, and keep going. On a perfect maze this is remarkable: when you can find no more dead ends, every cell still open is part of the one true solution, and you have solved the maze without ever guessing a direction. On a braided maze it is still the strongest opening move, but it leaves the solution plus every loop, so you finish the job another way. The trail shading in this game makes dead end filling easy to do in your head, because a stub you have already explored stays visibly shaded.
Trémaux's method, which never fails
The one maze solver that works on any maze at all, loops included, and the only one worth learning if you want the big stages. Mark every corridor as you walk it. At a junction, prefer a corridor with no marks; if there is none, take one with a single mark; never take a corridor marked twice. When you hit a dead end or a junction you have already visited, turn round, which adds a second mark to the corridor you came down and permanently retires it. Marked twice means ruled out. Keep going and you will reach the exit, and the corridors with exactly one mark at the end are your route. This is what the shaded trail is for: it is your first mark, and the second time you walk a stretch you can see it has been used up.
Work backwards from the exit
Cheap and often decisive. The corner a maze exits from usually has very few ways into it, so trace outwards from the green square instead of inwards from your marker and you commit to far fewer guesses per step. Two or three cells back from the exit you normally find one long corridor, and the real question becomes where that corridor starts rather than where the exit is. On a tall maze on a phone, scanning the last two rows backwards for ten seconds before you move will save you thirty moves.
A few habits that save moves
- Look before you move. Par is the shortest route, so a maze you solve in one pass with no backtracking is a maze you three star.
- Treat a junction as a decision and remember it. Most wasted moves come from arriving at a junction you have already failed at.
- Prefer the direction that heads towards the exit when two look equal. It is not a rule, but across sixty stages it wins more often than it loses.
- On a hard maze, solve the last quarter first. Working backwards from the exit narrows the search far more than working forwards narrows it.
- Use the hint when you are genuinely stuck rather than restarting. One star beats an abandoned stage, and the hint shows you the shape of the route you missed.
Why mazes are worth the time
A maze is one of the few puzzles where you can watch yourself get better at a method rather than just getting lucky. The first stages reward patience, the middle stages reward reading ahead, and the last stages only really open up once you stop wandering and start ruling things out. That is the same skill a maze solver written in code uses, and doing it with your eyes on a 31x31 grid is a decent way to understand how it works.
It also costs nothing and needs nothing. No download, no sign up, no fee, and it plays the same on a phone on a bus as it does on a desktop monitor.
Maze game FAQ
Is this maze game free to play online?
Yes. The maze game on OnlineGames2Play is free and runs in your browser on any phone, tablet or computer. There is nothing to download and no sign up. Online races only ask for a nickname.
How many maze stages are there?
There are 60 numbered stages. Stage 1 is a 7x7 grid and stage 60 is 31x31, and the grid grows by two cells every few stages. Once you finish stage 60, endless mode keeps building fresh mazes on four levels for as long as you want to play.
How do I control the maze game?
Arrow keys or WASD on a keyboard, a swipe on a touch screen, or a tap on any square next to you. You can also tap further down a corridor with no turnings and your marker walks there on its own. Walking into a wall simply does nothing.
How do the stars work in the maze game?
Every stage has one shortest route, and that move count is the par for the stage. Finish in par moves or fewer for three stars, inside 1.35 times par for two stars, and anything slower still earns one star. Your stars are saved on your device for each stage.
Does the hint solve the maze for me?
No. A hint lights up the next few squares of the best route from wherever you are standing, and then it is up to you again. Using a hint caps that stage at one star, and the game tells you so before the hint is revealed.
What is the daily maze?
One maze a day, built from the date in UTC, so every player anywhere gets exactly the same labyrinth. Finish it to keep your run of days going. Your streak and your move count are saved in your own browser, and a new maze arrives at midnight UTC.
Can I race friends through the same maze?
Yes. Choose Race friends, create a room and share the code or the invite link with up to five people. The maze is built from a number the host sends, so every player gets the identical maze, you can see how far everyone has got, and the first player to reach the exit wins.
Why does following one wall stop working on the later stages?
Keeping one hand on the wall only works while every wall in the maze is joined to the outer edge, which is true for the first 14 stages. After that the game starts removing dead ends, which creates loops, and a loop turns a stretch of wall into an island. Circle an island and you come back to where you began.