Warren

Warren: design

What the game is meant to be, and the decisions that shape it. The README says how it is built and run; this says what it is for. Where the two disagree about the game (not the code), this one wins. Keep it current: when a decision changes, change it here.

The idea

You wake in a wide grassy clearing walled in on every side by a maze that was not built for people. Up to four friends wake with you. Find the way out.

After The Maze Runner (the Glade, the walls, the Grievers, the sprint) and Labyrinth (a maze with rules of its own), seen and lit like Inside. A secret cart in the Scareathon arcade (code MAZE), played in landscape.

Pillars

1. Built for something bigger. The maze dwarfs you. Walls are huge, high, thick and damp; gaps through them are slots you squeeze through; the clearing is vast. Scale is the main feeling.
2. Quiet dread, not combat. You cannot fight what hunts the maze. You run, hide, climb and get out. Being caught costs you ground (back to the clearing), not the game.
3. Together, close by. Friends in a room run the same maze, hear each other only when near, and lose each other round corners.
4. Every maze new, every maze fair. Mazes are generated from rules, a fresh one each round, the same for everyone in a room. Rules, not hand edits, are how the maze changes (hand layouts are possible, but the rules come first).
5. Landscape first. Laid out, played and checked in landscape (1280x720), with mouse and keyboard, a gamepad, or touch on a phone held sideways. It must still run smoothly in a phone browser, and still fit a portrait window.

Look and feel (the art direction)

• The boy. Every player is Inside’s boy, the same character for everyone (no random looks): no face, a mask-like head with a chin, a plain basin-cut of hair low over the brow, a plain shirt, tapered dark trousers with some shape to the legs (never tubes), short angular boots. The only difference between players is the shirt colour, by seat: Inside’s deep red first, then faded blue, mustard, dull green. Every head and hair option made along the way is kept (CharacterStudio, and the head/hair sheets) for comparison. The runners (below) are the same boy too, in greyer shirts no player has: grey, brown, off-white, a dark charcoal-brown.
• Animation. Readable, exaggerated poses; a full-tilt sprint after Dylan O’Brien’s in The Maze Runner; jump, slide, roll and trip with believable hands and ankles. Reference: videoplayback.mp4.
• Light. Inside’s: overcast, misty, nearly colourless but for the red shirt; soft light from above, soft shadows. Mist thick enough to lose the far walls, but not so thick the maze is grey mush (lighter on the title and in the editor).
• Walls. Brutalist concrete: cast concrete inside the rings, precast slabs between them; photographed textures without visible tiling, rain stains running down from ledges. Plain boxes by default (no crowning or footing); decorated styles are for particular places. Solid, never planes.
• Ground. Damp dirt and mud in the halls (cracked dry patches, stones, wet mud, moss along the wall feet, puddles that reflect the walls), at the quality of Outside’s sand. Real 3D grass in the clearing that bends round you and stands back up, never mown.
• Life on the walls. Vines hang from the wall tops (climbable ropes); ivy where there are ways up.

The maze

Shape

Square rings round the clearing, middle out, each walled off from the next but for its gates. Only the first ring is built so far; the others are planned. The way out of the last ring is the exit, marked by a pale light standing up past it.

The plan is a grid of 14 m cells. Walls stand on the lines between cells. Every ring has its own style (MazeStyle), which is where the rules live, and which can be changed per ring in the editor (MazeLayout.styles).

The clearing

• 41 cells across: about 574 m. Open grass, stands of pines round its edge and dense woods in one corner (chosen by the seed), but no trees within 95 m of the middle. The middle is level (70 m out); past it very gentle hills, up to 4 m, level again near the walls. All set by ClearingStyle (scripts/clearing_style.gd, MazeLayout.clearing_style).
• Something different before each entrance (ClearingStyle.entrances): dense woods round one, grass up to his chest round another, a marsh in front of another, nothing at all near the last.
• The marsh (scripts/marsh.gd, the marsh settings of ClearingStyle): not a pond but a wide, ragged bog, about 190 m along the wall and 125 m out, beginning a few metres from the wall’s foot. Many shallow, irregular pools and channels of standing water between hummocks and tussocks of wet ground, black mud at the water’s edge, broad open meres in some parts and flats of tussocks in others, and a few deep dark pools he has to swim. The water is one sheet at one level that the ground stands up through: the shape is all the ground’s, from the seed. Sedges grow all over it, up out of the shallow water too (thinner there and in open gaps, so the eye catches water at his height; darker and yellower than the field’s grass; none in the deep pools), with reeds and bulrushes in clumps along the pools’ edges (rounded heads of brown velvet; some gone to seed, some broken, some leant over) and lily pads and a scum of duckweed on the open water. All of it bends round whoever pushes through. Wading slows him (the deeper, the slower), he splashes going in and leaves rings. A lane in from the gate has nothing deep and nothing standing in it: the way in is wet but open.
• Its wall is a special case, far thicker than the grid, with its own controls (ClearingStyle, “Clearing wall”): by default 3 cells of solid stone (about 54 m) and 92 m high, twice the other walls between rings. Nothing grows or stands on it.
• Four gates, one in the middle of each side, each a slot about 2 m wide (about three of him) running the whole way through that wall. Every gate leads on into the maze: none is a dead end.

Ring styles

	Avenues (ring 1)	Narrows (ring 3)	Tangle (ring 3, planned)
Depth	6 cells (outside the clearing wall’s 3 of solid stone)	4 cells	4 cells
Halls	2 cells wide (about 16 m between walls)	1 cell	1 cell
Walls	12 m thick, 34 m high	3.2 m thick	3.2 m thick
Passages	go on straight half the time; no extra branching; no loops	winding, forking	branching often, many loops
On the walls	climbable ivy up a tenth of the faces (a third to two-thirds of the way up, never to the top), vines hanging from some of it, vines strung across an eighth of the halls (walked as tightropes from a buttress with ivy up it; the act button cuts one into two hanging vines)	terraces, ivy, vines, rope bridges	as Narrows

What a style can set: depth (cells), hall width (cells), wall thickness, its border wall (the wall round its outside: how high, and extra cells of solid wall thickening it on the far side), how often passages go straight, how often they branch, how many loops, narrow entrances (a passage of some length from each gate) and doorways (a slot through a gatehouse), and the share of walls with terraces, upper terraces, rope bridges, ivy to the top, vines on terraces, wall-top bridges and wall-top vines.

Because walls are thick, any opening one cell long through a wall is itself a slot (cell minus wall thickness): that is how the gates become slots.

Ways up

Terraces of stone against the walls (steps for a giant: 6.5 m and 13 m), ivy to climb their faces and sometimes on to the wall top, vines to catch with a jump and swing on, rope bridges across halls and between wall tops. Which a ring has is its style’s choice. The wall tops are a second level you can travel along.

Players

• Move, look, jump, and everything Outside’s boy can do: sprint (its own button), duck, slide, roll, climb a ledge, kick off a wall, climb ivy, swing on ropes, cross bridges.
• Controls: left thumb moves, right half drags the camera; keyboard/mouse and gamepad too. The camera follows behind when you run away from it, and never circles you when you run sideways.

What hunts the maze

• Apophis, Outside’s great snake.
• Mummies, six kinds from Outside, in packs.
• The Griever: a gelatinous lump of wet meat on eight robotic, procedurally animated spider legs that plant on walls and floor, with a stinger. It sees, hunts, winds up, strikes.
• Added 2026-10-18 at the user’s request (“models and animations specifically, and then as reusable components”): each is a GameCommon creature (look and motion, creatures/<name>/) driven by a thin MazeEnemy here.
  • Ghoul (after Zelda’s ReDeads, from our mummies, no wraps): raw red, bare, a blank mask face. A statue in a dead end until it sees someone; its wrenching shriek freezes anyone facing it for about 2 s; it rushes (faster than a walk) and hug-grabs. Turn away or run at once and it is easy to get past.
  • Giant centipede: rests coiled, hunts faster than a run (a sprint escapes), up the wall feet round corners, rears as a warning and pounces with its claws.
  • Giant spider: waits head down high on a wall, drops on a thread, charges in dashes, rears, lunges. Loses a sprinter. Climbs back up to wait.
  • Meat abomination (“MEAT BEAST” on the dev panel): slow, never lets go, nearly fills a hall; lashes tendrils from a few metres after a visible wind-up; touching it catches.
  • Flesh mounds (added 2026-10-18: “hands and legs sticking out of it … like it’s absorbed a bunch of people”, no mouth; “the torsos should use the character torsos, with mask faces … less bloody, more like the skin grew together, maybe pussy”; “different size abominations that can grow and merge together or by absorbing people”): people grown together, one creature in sizes by how many bodies are in it. Pallid waxy skin flowing from body to body, puckered scar-dark seams, stretch marks, veins, boils of pus; the boys’ blank mask faces; men’s arms, long gaunt arms and legs. Four forms (2026-10-18, the user: “a couple more amalgam stages rather than just the 2”):
    • Pair (2): two boys grown together back to back, the one under on all fours, the one on top face up with his arms and legs waving like an upturned beetle’s. Scuttles nearly as fast as a run (3.9 m/s); where its quarry is in a straight line within 9 m it crouches (0.6 s) and rushes at 6.6 m/s, faster than a sprint, for only about 1.1 s. A step aside or a side turning gets away. Running into it catches.
    • Amalgam (3 or 4): boys fused at the hips in a wheel of limbs. Shambles a little slower than a run; where its quarry is in a straight line down a hall it rears with its limbs splayed (0.6 s, the warning) and cartwheels at them at 5.1 m/s, faster than a run, slower than a sprint, for about 3 s, then is spent and lurches slowly. A sprint, a side turning or a climb gets away. Rolling into you catches.
    • Strider (5 or 6): the boys joined at the hips in a ring, each bent over outwards, heads hanging, walking on all ten or twelve legs, the ring turning slowly. A little slower than a run hunting (3.5 m/s); it faces every way, so it grabs at anyone within about 2.5 m on any side (0.95 s wind-up, the ring tipping and lunging, the boys on that side throwing their arms). A closing hand or walking into it catches.
    • Mound (7 to 10): fills more of a hall the bigger it is, crawls slower (no faster than a walk). Hauls itself on its hands, on the walls where they are near; grabs with the hands at its front after a wind-up (arms drawn up, hands splayed and shaking). A closing hand or walking into it catches.
    • Growing: whom it catches it absorbs (their body is seen dragged in; the player still goes back to the clearing) and it gains a body; two that meet merge, the smaller flowing into the bigger. Growing past a form’s most makes it the next form (pair, amalgam, strider, mound). Capped at 10 bodies (phones). Each section has, by default, two pairs, two amalgams, a strider of 5 or 6 and a mound of 7 or 8 (MazeStyle pairs, amalgams, striders, flesh_mounds).
  • Slime wall: see-through jelly full of skeletons that fills a hall wall to wall, below walking pace; touching it catches (you are drawn in and tumble among the bones). Find another way round.
  • Bats: a colony roosts on a wall; running or sprinting near wakes it. They catch nobody: they mob the player and call every hunter within 45 m to them. Duck or stand still and they lose interest.
  • Demon baboons: troops of a mandrill alpha and baboons. They bark, flank (some go where you are heading), burst faster than a run and tire; a sprint escapes. Leap-grab.
  • Feral dogs: packs that follow players’ scent trails nose-down out of sight, bay and gallop on sight (between a run and a sprint), lunge-bite. Climbing breaks the trail.
  • Aliens: twos and threes that walk calmly and blink ahead of you when unwatched (a shimmering column warns first; looking at it stops it), then raise a hand and catch you in a pale light.
  • Beetles (after Outside’s scarabs): a swarm of several hundred glossy black beetles with an oily sheen (ground beetles and dor beetles) waits in cracks at the foot of a wall, in a dead end or along a hall. When someone comes down the hall they pour out and flood along the floor after them, lapping up the wall feet, a little faster than a run and slower than a sprint. Those that reach you run up your legs; enough of them for a moment and you are caught. Sprint away, or get up onto a terrace, the ivy or a vine (they climb no higher than about a metre up a wall); when they get no nearer for a few seconds they stream home into the cracks.
  • Fish people (deep ones, out of Innsmouth; the user asked 2026-10-18 for “a fish person enemy that uses the character controller as a base”): tall, stooped, grey-green and scaled, a fish’s head with glassy eyes and needle teeth, gills, a fin down the back, webbed hands and feet. Each lies in a black pool of its own in a hall, sunk to its eyes: a puddle with two eyes in it, if you look. Down there it hears only what is close or loud: walk softly past along the far wall and it stays down; run near it, or step in its pool, and it rises and croaks, and its croak brings up every other fish person within about 40 m. It shambles below a walk, but lopes faster than a run in short bursts when it sees you near, then stands gulping for breath; a sprint or a corner loses it. It lunges and grabs with both hands. It cannot stay out of the water: after half a minute, or once it has lost you, it goes back to its pool and sinks.
  • Angel (a “biblically accurate” one, after Ezekiel’s ophanim and Isaiah’s seraphim): three great wheels of pale gold one within another, turning slowly, their rims full of real eyes that blink out of step, round a burning white-gold heart half hidden by six wings. Huge (7 m across), silent, floating over the halls; the one warm bright thing in the mist, lighting the walls round it. It drifts slowly and everyone passes under it, but its eyes look every way, so there is no creeping past behind it. Being SEEN is the danger: while you stand in its sight in the open its gaze builds on you over about four seconds (quicker near it), and everyone can see and hear it build: every eye turns on you, the wheels stop, the wings before its face part, a cone of pale light reaches down and pools at your feet, and a choir swells and rises. If it reaches the full you are drawn up into the light and taken. Break its sight (a corner, a slot, onto the ivy) and the gaze falls away. One in the first ring.
  • Giant toad (added at the user’s request, “a frog enemy”): a huge warty toad, taller than the boy’s chest, squatting wet and still in a dead end, throat pulsing. Seen, it croaks (its throat a great bubble), turns on you slowly and comes in great arcing leaps (slower than a run, on the whole). Near and facing you, it winds up for about a second where you can see it (the throat swells, the mouth gapes), aims at your chest and holds that aim for the last third of a second, and shoots a sticky tongue several metres. Step aside, duck under it, or be out of reach; it misses, gulps and sits a moment.
  • Frog swarm: dozens of small frogs (fist- to cat-sized) in a muddy pool in a dead end, a few sitting about its edge. Come near and they pour out at you in hopping waves, leaping over each other, croaking in chorus. Those that reach you leap on and cling, and the more there are the slower you go; enough of them for long enough and you are caught. Outrun them, shake them off by running and jumping, or get up onto something (a terrace, the ivy): they cannot hop that high, give up and go home.
  • Harpies (the user: “lets add a harpie type enemy”): a starved woman’s head and trunk (ribs, hollow eyes, a too-wide lipless mouth, lank wet hair over the face) on great ragged grey-black wings, with a bird’s lower body and scaly raptor legs. Each perches high on a wall (the ledge, or the top), hunched, wings mantled, watching the hall below. Seeing someone out in the open it screeches (the first warning), takes off over the walls and circles high over them; then a falling cry (the second warning), a stoop over the end of a long straight hall, and a dive down it, talons first, at chest height. It flies over the walls, so it can come from anywhere, but it needs a straight run of hall, wider than its wings, under open sky: under a bridge or a platform, or in a slot, you cannot be dived at, and staying hidden long enough sends it home. Its line is set the last half second: duck, slide or roll and the talons pass over; step aside and they pass by; stand or run straight and you are snatched. Two dives, then it climbs back to its perch and lands.
  • Giant boar (after the boar gods of Princess Mononoke): a wild boar far over the boy’s head at the shoulder, black bristle with a crest down its hump, great chipped tusks (one broken), mud-caked, scarred, old arrows in its hide, steaming breath. It roots in the mud of a dead end or a wide hall. Poor eyes, a great nose: it smells anyone near, much further upwind of it than downwind, so creep past downwind. Noticing you it snorts, stamps and paws, its hackles rise and it lowers its head (about two seconds, seen and heard), then charges in a straight line, far faster than a sprint and barely able to turn. Step aside (a side passage, a slot, a way up) and it thunders past and skids, or slams into the wall and stands stunned a few seconds, then forgets you a while. In its way, you are tossed and caught. It cannot reach anyone up a wall.
  • Chickens (added at the user’s request, “lets also add chickens”): flocks of scruffy feral hens and a rooster foraging in the halls, pecking and scratching at the mud, heads bobbing with the chicken head-lock; filthy and molting, a rooster crowing in the fog, and a little comic relief. Like the bats they catch nobody: run or sprint near them, or walk upright close by, and they explode in a squawking, flapping panic (some flying, feathers everywhere), and the racket calls every hunter within 40 m. Creep past crouched. Run into one and the rooster flies into a rage (after Zelda’s cuccos): the flock mobs you, leaping and beating round your head, pecking, slowing you, calling the hunters all the while, until you get away.
  • Gargoyles (“and a Gargoyle enemy”): a carved-stone grotesque, alive, bat-winged, of the walls’ own weathered concrete. It crouches as a statue on a ledge over a hall (a terrace’s edge, a wall top low enough to be seen, or a stone corbel jutting from the wall), and cannot be told from a carving. Pass beneath it and it stirs (a faint ember in its cracks and eyes, its head grinding round to follow you, dust trickling off it), then drops in a long glide onto where you were going, its shadow darkening where it will land: keep moving, or turn aside, and it misses. A miss turns it to stone where it lands for a few seconds: the time to get away. Then it hunts in heavy bounds a little slower than a run, slow to turn (a turn down a side passage gains ground), and from a few metres in front of you winds up (wings raised, a snarl) and leaps. Lost, it beats its way back up to its ledge.
  • The herd (added 2026-10-18, “lets add deer and elk as well”): white-tailed deer standing in a hall, real at first glance. When they see you every head comes up and turns to you, and they freeze, staring, too long, eyes giving back the light. Look away and they are a little closer when you look back (they never come within 12 m). Come near (9 m) or run at them and one snorts and stamps, the tails go up white, they stot off on stiff legs and break into a stampede down the passages away from you; if the only way out is past you, it comes straight back down the hall at you, and a deer that runs into you knocks you down (caught). The alarm and the stotting are the warning, nearly two seconds: stand aside. One in a herd of four or more is wrong: legs a little too long, a head that turns round further than a neck should; now and then it stands up on its hind legs and takes a step towards you; it never runs with the others, and stays watching you as they go.
  • The bull elk: taller at the shoulder than the boy, holding a stretch of halls as his own. On his ground and in his sight, he faces you and bugles (an eerie rising scream, steam pouring from his mouth: the first time only), paws the ground and lowers his antlers, then charges faster than anyone can run. For an instant he can still swing at you; then his line is set and he can hardly turn. Step aside into a side passage or behind a buttress, climb, or leave his ground; standing in his line, you are caught. He runs on past, stands blowing, turns slowly and comes again.
  • Tiny imps (added 2026-10-18, “add tiny imps and imp swarm”): knee-high devils, sooty red-brown, pot-bellied, bat-eared, needle-toothed. Gangs of three or four perch head down on a wall face like gargoyles, chittering. They pester rather than kill: noticing you, they cackle, scurry down the wall and scuttle after you (faster than a run, slower than a sprint), leap on and cling (back, thigh, shoulder). Each one on you holds you back, and its cackle tells every hunter nearby where you are (they fetch bigger things). Three on at once for a moment bring you down. A jump or two shakes them off; a roll, slide or dive throws them all off; thrown off, one tumbles and throws a tantrum before it comes again. They give up when they lose you and climb back to their perch.
  • Crows (added 2026-10-18, the user: “add crows /ravens and blue jays”): murders of seven to thirteen American crows sitting along the edges of the wall tops and ledges over a hall (the lowest ledges if there is room on them), side on, looking about, preening, shuffling, now and then a caw (a bow forward, tail flicked, bill wide). They are the maze’s watchers. Walk in a hall below them, in their sight, and every head turns to you; as you go they follow along the walls in short flights, one after another, leapfrogging to keep over you (never far from home, never into the clearing). Walking calls nobody. Run near them, or sprint within a longer way, and the murder erupts cawing and wheels over you, following you round, and its cawing calls every hunter within 45 m to you, over and over, for about nine seconds; then they settle on the walls where they are, slow to go off again for a while. When something catches someone near them they rise and wheel over the place, cawing, for half a minute: a sign to everyone else. They catch nobody. Walk, do not run, under crows.
  • Imp swarm: a crack at the foot of a wall. Come near (or run near) and it chitters for a second, then dozens of imps pour out as a tide along the floor and up and along the walls. Those that reach you run up you and cling, slowing you; ten on you for a second and you are down. A roll throws them off; a sprint outruns them; getting up onto anything (a terrace, ivy, a vine) or out of reach and they give up and stream home, and rest before coming out again.
• The colossus (added 2026-10-18: “and a colossus”, then “even bigger, crawl over the top of the maze, and try to use just 1 fingertip to crush you”, and “more lanky and spindly”): what the maze might have been built for. A gaunt giant 260 m tall if it stood, after Shadow of the Colossus (and Attack on Titan’s giants over the wall): impossibly long thin arms and legs, knobbly joints, a narrow ribcage and hunched spine, a small stone mask of a head on a long neck with pale eyes, sparse slabs of weathered stone with moss, grass, vines and glowing runes, tatters of dark fur, long bony fingers. One crawls over each ring wide enough (the Avenues and the Galleries) like a spider, on the wall tops, never in the halls: its hands and feet come down only on wall tops of its ring, its elbows and knees bent high above, its body slung low over the maze, the halls in its shadow; dust and stones rain into the halls where a hand comes down. Its upper body is lost in the mist. It never crosses the clearing.
  • It hunts with one finger. Whoever it sees out in the open, it stops, bends its head down to peer between the walls, and holds its long index finger over them (its shadow growing on the ground, following slowly), then presses it down, grinds, lifts and tries again where they ran, four times at most; under the fingertip is caught. The finger cannot get into a slot, right up to the foot of a wall, or under a ledge. Lose it and it gives up and crawls on.
  • It sees from above whoever is out in the open in front of it; not in a slot, flat against a wall, under a ledge or bridge, or behind a wall from where its eyes are. Standing still halves how far it sees. Running hard near one of its hands or feet makes it stop and peer about.
  • Now and then, crawling beside the clearing’s wall, it rears up, leans its hands on the top and looks over: from the clearing, a gaunt figure over the wall with two pale eyes. It cannot reach in.
  • Its limbs as ways up (riding it over the walls) are not done: see below.
  • Coyotes (added 2026-10-18 at the user’s request, “there should be a coyote, and coyote skinwalker as well”): real coyotes, lean and rangy, grizzled grey-tan with a cream throat and belly, big upright ears, yellow eyes, a bushy black-tipped tail carried low. Packs of three to five trot about the halls, sniff, stand and stare. Mostly skittish: seeing someone they shadow them at a distance (about 15 m), stopping to stare whenever they look round; now and then the pack breaks into its yip-howl chorus. Come close or run at one and it gallops off and slinks back. One alone, or a pair, never does more. Only a pack of three or more round someone alone (nobody else within 12 m) grows bold over about seven seconds: they circle, closing in low and snarling, a yip as the warning, and after a couple of seconds of it the one behind you darts in and snaps. Turn on one and it backs off; run at one and the pack loses its nerve; running gets away (they close in slower than a run); a friend coming near ends it. After a snap the pack scatters and is not bold again for a while. Tame coyotes live in the clearing too (ClearingStyle “Wildlife”): they stare, yip and run off, and are never bold.
  • Skinwalker (the internet-horror figure, kept to horror fiction): something wearing a coyote’s skin, hidden in one of the packs as one of them. Look closely: it is bigger, its joints bend the wrong ways, its eyes shine too much, it never joins the chorus, and when the coyotes run from you it does not: it stares. From round a corner it calls out to you, a voice made in code (a “hey?”, a “hel-lo”, a coyote’s yip turned human; never anyone’s real voice). Look straight at it from close, or walk up to it, and it stops pretending: it freezes, turns its head to you and rises (the warning, nearly two seconds) onto long gaunt legs, the hide hanging down its back, the coyote’s head a mask over a pale human face; its pack scatters. Then it runs you down on all fours in bursts: down flat and a jerk of the head (the wind-up), a burst far faster than a sprint, then it stops dead, twitching. Bursts need a straight line to you; out of its sight it crawls after you slower than a run. Turn corners, get up high (it cannot climb: it stands under you and gives up) or get into the clearing (it will not follow). Lost, it goes back to its pack. The first ring has two coyote packs and one skinwalker hidden in one of them.
  • Tripod (the user: “a giant 3 legged tripod enemy like from war of the worlds”; then “the tripod legs should be more fluid, noodly”): a Martian fighting-machine far taller than the walls. A low cowl of weathered bronze plate some 60 m up, half lost in the mist, a pale eye glowing in the dark under its brow; three long, whippy legs of segmented metal that coil up as they lift, swing high over the walls and uncoil to plant in the halls with a boom that shakes the ground; cable tentacles and a clawed grasper hanging under it; a heat ray on a jointed arm; red weed trailing off it. It does not chase: it patrols round its ring in great slow strides (slower than a walk), its searchlight crossing the wall tops and sweeping slowly down one hall after another. Lit in the open for half a second, you are found: its horn sounds, a deep, distorted “ULLA” heard across the maze (the warning), its light stays on you and its hood turns to you. Near under it, its grasper uncoils high over you and comes down slowly; get away or out of its sight and it draws back, stay and its claws lift you away. Further off, its arm swings round and the emitter charges (about two and a half seconds: it glows brighter and its hum rises); then the ray comes down the hall at you from well up it and burns along it through where you stood, drifting after you only slowly. Step out of its line, into a side passage or a slot, under a ledge or behind a buttress, and it burns past, leaving a black scorch with a glowing seam and steam rising off it. The walls cut its light and its ray as they do its sight: against the near wall, under a ledge, in the ivy, you are hidden. One in a ring at most (it is huge); the first ring has one.
• How many of each a ring has is its style’s rule (MazeStyle, “What hunts it”); the first ring has some of every kind. The dev panel puts any of them in ahead of you.
• None enters the clearing. Caught, a player is put back in the clearing. Once out, nobody is hunted.
• With friends, the room’s maker runs them; everyone else sees copies.

Who else is in the maze

Added 2026-10-18 at the user’s request (“npc runners”): other boys in the maze, after the Gladers’ Runners, run by the computer. They are the same boy as the players, on the same controller and rig, in muted shirts no player has, so they read as others but plainly the same kind of person. Each knows his own section (ring) and stays in it.

• They run it. They jog its halls from place to place, down the middle of the wide ones, and now and then climb some ivy to look about and come down again.
• They are hunted. Everything that hunts the maze hunts them as it would a player. They see it coming and sprint (as fast as a player’s sprint, near enough) to where it cannot get first: the clearing best, or up ivy they will reach before it. Caught, a runner is struck down and is back in the clearing, sitting, as a caught player is; then he jogs out to his section again.
• They draw hunters away. Sprinting, a runner is loud: anything hunting that sees him near turns after him if he is nearer than what it was after, so one sprinting past pulls the pack off you. And one who sees a player hunted near him waves both arms over his head (no voice: gestures only) and the hunter takes after him instead; not often (half a minute between).
• They lead. Come up to one (a few metres, in sight) and he stops, faces you and beckons, then runs (not sprints, so you can keep up) for the gate out of his section; fall behind and he stops and beckons again; lose him and he gives up. At the gate he stands aside and points through it, and goes back to his running. He leads one section at a time, never all the way out: the next section’s runners know theirs. Then he will not lead again for a while.
• How many: a ring’s style says (MazeStyle, “Who else is in it”); two in each for now. Few, since each poses a whole boy, and none is posed when far from the camera.
• With friends, the room’s maker runs them; everyone else sees copies driven by the same inputs, so they climb, sprint and gesture alike.

  Wildlife

Not everything that lives here hunts (added 2026-10-18: “there should be non hostile regular deer and elk”). Herds of ordinary white-tailed deer (a buck, does, spotted fawns) and of elk (a bull, cows, calves) graze out in the clearing’s meadow, towards its corners and the edges of the woods (never the middle where everyone wakes, nor the ways to the gates), and a few stand in the halls. They graze and wander, lift their heads to watch you come, flick their ears and tails, and run off when you come near (deer stotting a few bounds with their white tails up, then away at a gallop; elk trotting, then galloping), and settle to graze where they stop; a bull bugles now and then far off. They catch nobody and are nothing to be afraid of, which makes the ones that are wrong worse. How many: ClearingStyle and MazeStyle, “Wildlife”. Each machine runs its own copy from the round’s seed, frightened by the same players, so they agree.

Wildlife

Not everything in the clearing and the maze is a threat. Added 2026-10-18 at the user’s request (“there should be non hostile regular deer and elk and chicken as well. Some should be in the clearing”):

• Birds (added 2026-10-18, the user: “add crows /ravens and blue jays”). Real anatomy and a real wingbeat (the wing straight and fingered on the downstroke, folded at the wrist on the upstroke, a flick at the top), take-offs with a jump, glides, banking, landings with a flare; their calls are made in code.
  • Blue jays: families of three to six in the pines at the edge of the woods nearest the middle (ClearingStyle, “Wildlife”): vivid blue, barred black, white below, a black necklace, crested. One of the very few colour accents in the near-colourless clearing, so they are small and few. They flit from branch tip to branch tip and tree to tree in bounding flights, drop to the ground in front of the trees to hop about and peck, and fly back up; “jay! jay!” with a bob and the crest up, a squeaky “queedle”, and now and then (as real jays do) a red-tailed hawk’s scream. Walk in under their trees and they gather on the branches over you and scold, crests up; run through those on the ground and they go up into the branches. Something that hunts near the trees, they scold too: a tell.
  • Crows in the clearing: a small flock in the treetops of a stand by the woods, walking (with the crow’s swagger) and pecking in the meadow in front of it. Walk near and those on the ground fly up into the trees; run at them and the whole flock goes up cawing, wheels over the trees and settles. They call nobody.
  • Ravens: a pair (or one) on the wall tops of a ring (MazeStyle, “Wildlife”): a third bigger than a crow, a wedge tail, a shaggy throat, a heavy bill; deep croaks and hollow knocking. An omen: when someone comes near and something that hunts waits in the halls ahead of them, the ravens fly ahead, croaking, to sit on the walls over it, and stay there while it stays. Those who notice where the ravens went know what lies there.
• Tame chickens: ordinary farmyard hens and a rooster that forage, cluck and crow. Run through them and they scatter a few steps, squawking, and settle; walk near and they edge away. They never call the hunters and never mob. The clearing has a couple of flocks (ClearingStyle, “Wildlife”), the first pecking at the edge of the woods, all well away from the middle and the paths to the gates; a ring can have some in its halls too (MazeStyle, “Wildlife”, none by default). Placed from the round’s seed, so everyone in a room sees the same flocks.
• Insects (added 2026-10-18: “moths and flys”, “dragon flys”). Mostly atmosphere, and a tell or two:
  • Moths: pale, dusty moths fluttering erratically in clouds round every light in the mist: the angel’s burning heart, fires and torches, the pale light past the exit; they blunder into the light and bounce off it, and a few rest on the wall by it and scatter as you come. Big ones (luna moths, death’s-head hawkmoths among the plain ones) rest on the walls of the halls with their wings spread flat, and burst off as you pass, flutter about and settle again. At dusk and through the night clouds of them come out over the clearing’s grass.
  • Flies: buzzing clouds of blowflies (red eyes, metallic blue-green bodies) round anything dead or of meat: the flesh mounds, the meat beast, the slime wall, carcasses lying in dead ends, the boar’s lair; and for a while wherever someone was caught. Their buzz carries a few metres: flies mean something dead, or something of meat, is near. Stand still among them and a few land on you and crawl on your head and shoulders until you move.
  • Dragonflies: over the marsh, in patches along its pools: darting fast and straight, stopping dead to hover, turning at right angles, perching on the bulrushes’ tips with their wings held out flat; blue-green, the one colour in the grey. They take off as you come near.
  • They catch nobody, call nobody, and nothing about them is sent between players: each machine makes its own from the round’s seed. How many: MazeStyle “Wildlife” (moths per light, big moths on the walls, flies per carrion, carcasses in dead ends) and ClearingStyle “Wildlife” (dragonflies over the marsh, moth clouds at dusk). Each swarm is one draw, and is drawn and moved only near the camera.

What lies about

Added 2026-10-18 at the user’s request (“there should be grappling hooks, backpacks, spears, torches to find, and other abandoned loot through the clearing, and abandoned (or occupied) campsites”). Others were here before you, and left things behind. They are tools to get away with, never weapons (pillar 2): nothing found kills, or even hurts, what hunts the maze. A spear buys a moment; a torch keeps the small things off; a flare sends them looking elsewhere.

• Grappling hook. Out of your hand with the act button at the lip of a ledge in reach above you (a mezzanine, a terrace, the platform under a sewer pipe, a buttress’s top: any ledge’s edge the hook can feel for, up to about 13 m: never the wall tops, which stay out of reach), or at anything marked as a grapple point. It bites, you swing on its rope and climb it, and at the top pull yourself over the lip. A big new way up, but its rope frays: six catches and it parts.
• Backpack. Worn as soon as it is taken: room for four things instead of two. Full, it slows you a little.
• Spear. A sharpened sapling with a shard of iron lashed to it. Thrown (act), it staggers the first thing that hunts it passes near: knocked back a couple of metres, rocking, for three seconds, and it catches nobody in that time. Then it comes on again. It lies where it fell, to be taken up again. The swarms are not staggered by it.
• Torch. A stick with a head of pitch-black rag. Lit when taken into the hand (put away, it is snuffed), it lights the halls round you (its own light and flame, GameCommon’s fire) and burns for four minutes, low for the last half minute, then is out. The swarms (beetles, the imp swarm, the frog swarm) fear fire: within five metres of a burning torch, in a hand or lying where it was thrown, they will not come at you, and give up and go home. Held to a cold campfire it lights it; a burnt-out torch held to a burning one is lit again.
• Flare. A road flare. Thrown, it is struck: a hard red light for 45 seconds, and what hunts within 45 m and is after nobody goes to see; when it lands, what is chasing someone further off than the flare is drawn off too. Dropped, it is not struck.
• Map scrap. A page torn from an exercise book: read (from the inventory), it shows the halls round you in pencil and the way to the gate out of where you are (the clearing’s nearest gate, or your section’s way out) for a few seconds, and crumbles. There is still no map.
• Rope ladder. Hung (from the inventory) standing at the edge of a drop of 2.4 to 16 m, it hangs from there to the ground: a way down, and back up, for everyone, for the rest of the round.

Each lies in the grass or the mud with a small glint now and then off it (wet metal, a bit of glass), never lit up like a prize. The act button near one takes it (the boy stoops for it); “E TAKE THE TORCH” at the foot of the screen says so. Two slots, four with a backpack; tap a slot (or 1 to 4; on a pad the d-pad and Y) to take a tool into your hand or put it back, or to read a map or hang a ladder; DROP (X) puts it down. With something in your hand you cannot take hold of ivy or a vine, so walking into ivy puts it away for you. Held, a torch is held up, a spear carried point up and levelled over the shoulder to throw, the hook’s coil hangs from the hand; the backpack is worn.

Where (the rules, ClearingStyle and MazeStyle “What lies about”): in the clearing, a set number of each (one hook, backpack, flare, map and ladder, two spears and two torches by default), among the edge of the woods, in the tall grass, by the pond and out in the field, never within 40 m of the middle where everyone wakes nor near the ways from the middle to the gates; the grass is trodden thin round each. In the maze, six in each square section’s halls, in the ends of halls first (the cells with the most walls), never by its gates; mostly flares, maps and torches. More lie by the camps. Placed from the round’s seed: everyone in a room finds the same things in the same places.

Together: only the room’s maker says who gets what (a guest asks); taken, it is gone for everyone. What anyone holds is seen in their hand; what is dropped or thrown is seen to fall and lie; torches lit and out, campfires lit and ladders hung are seen by all. A guest’s spear asks the maker to stagger what it hit.

Camps

• Left behind (three in the clearing, one in each square section’s halls): a cold ring of stones round a bed of ash and charred stubs, a lean-to of tarp over a ridge pole on forked sticks (sometimes fallen in), bedrolls laid out or rolled, a log to sit on, a pot, a broken crate, a sack, sticks and stones scattered; in the clearing often a post with tally marks cut in its board, in the maze tallies scratched on the wall at the end of the hall. Sometimes a struggle: the lean-to down, the pot kicked over, two furrows where something was dragged away. A thing or two of what lies about is left by each. Hold a lit torch to its fire to light it: a fire ward of seven metres, for good.
• With people at them (two in the clearing, the first at the edge of the woods): the same, kept, a fire burning with its light, and smoke going up high enough to be seen from far across the clearing, so you can find them. Two or three runners rest round the fire between runs (one asleep on a bedroll): the same boy as everyone, in runners’ shirts. Come up and one looks up and points you to what is worth taking lying near the camp (or beckons you in to the fire if there is nothing). Nothing hunts in the clearing, so they are never hunted there.
• The ground round a camp in the clearing is trodden: the grass worn thin, raggedly, never bare.

Playing together

• Alone, or a room for up to four: make a room, share its four-letter code, the maker starts. The maze comes from the room code and the round, so nothing about it is sent.
• Proximity voice (web): talk with the MIC button (or V), off until you turn it on. Full volume within 4 m, silent by 30 m, heard from where the speaker is, muffled through walls. Peer to peer (WebRTC), set up through the room.
• A round ends when everyone is out; the maker calls the next maze.
• Score (sent to the arcade): 10000 less the seconds it took to get out.

Performance rules

• Target phones in a browser (GL Compatibility, WebGL). The web .pck must stay well under GitHub’s 100 MB limit (textures capped at 1024).
• Anything simulated per object (vines, rope bridges) must rest when still and nobody is near; never simulate thousands of things every frame.
• Anything numerous and spread out (grass squares, trees) is updated only near the camera and only when it changes.
• Resting means not processing at all, not a check that returns early: thousands of early returns cost milliseconds. Ropes and bridges rest with Rope.rest and one Rope.Waker starts those near anyone; ivy waits for one IvyClimb.Grower.
• Never loop over a big group (ropes, ladders) every step to find what is near: ask NearIndex.near. The boy’s controller did that, so every runner cost ~4 ms and three made the frame rate fall to single figures.
• Never work out a whole-maze MazeNav.field in a loop: each is a walk of every cell, and only the last 96 are kept (the hunters share them). Walk only the few cells needed instead.
• tools/frame_split.gd (frame time and every processing script, per place) and tools/runner_costs.gd measure these.
• Check the first seconds too: no settling or warm-up work that runs for everything at once.

Not decided or not done

• Rings 2 and 3 (styles exist; not built or played yet), and what changes between rings beyond the style.
• Moving walls, doors that shut at night, a day/night cycle.
• A map, sound and music, player names. (A map scrap shows the way for a moment; there is no map.)
• Loot: a knife, a canteen or a whistle (thought of, not made); the hunters do not use the rope ladders; a friend’s grappling hook rope is not seen by others (only them on it); the runners in the maze do not yet stop at camps (the ones at camps stay there).
• Enemies using the ways up (terraces, bridges, wall tops).
• Climbing the colossus: its limbs, fur and stone as ways up, riding it over the walls (the ivy’s Ladder would have to move with a bone, and the character controller does not carry a climber on a moving body).
• Reconnecting mid-round past the server’s 90 seconds; a relay (TURN) server for voice behind strict networks.
• Whether the score should reward helping friends out.