Collect every coin while staying ahead of the chaser
Coin Maze is a momentum-based maze puzzle where your character slides in a chosen direction and travels in a straight line until they hit a wall. Every coin you pass over is collected automatically. Each stage is complete only when every coin on the board has been collected. You must complete three progressively harder stages to win the game, and your leaderboard score is based on the total time taken across all three.
Every stage includes an active threat: a chaser that starts navigating the maze toward your position after your first move. The chaser uses a shortest-path algorithm — it always takes the most direct walkable route to wherever you are. If it catches you, the current stage resets completely. Your coin progress and position are lost, but the timer keeps running. Getting caught is not game-over, but it costs serious time and can cascade into additional catches before you collect all coins.
Each day's maze is freshly generated on a 17×17 grid using recursive backtracking with additional open passages punched through to create multiple routes. Every coin position is validated to guarantee it is reachable from the starting position before the puzzle is used. The maze is the same for all players on a given day, ensuring a shared and comparable challenge.
Use arrow keys, WASD, or swipe in a direction to send your character sliding. You travel in a straight line and stop only when a wall blocks further movement. You cannot stop mid-corridor or change direction while moving — your direction is committed the moment you input it. From your new stopping position, you choose the next direction and repeat.
The chaser spawns and begins moving after your first input in each stage. In Easy stages, it waits 3 seconds before appearing and moves once every 500 milliseconds. In Medium stages, the spawn delay shortens to 2.5 seconds and the chaser moves every 450 milliseconds. In Hard stages, the chaser appears after only 2 seconds and moves every 400 milliseconds — noticeably faster and more aggressive. Coin density also increases with difficulty: Easy stages place 20 to 45 coins, Medium stages 46 to 75, and Hard stages can hold up to 150 coins. More coins mean longer sessions spent on each stage, giving the chaser more time to close the gap.
If the chaser catches you, the stage resets to its original layout — your position and all coins return to their starting state. The game timer does not reset. You begin again from the start of that stage, and the chaser will spawn again after your first move.
Scoring: Scoring uses time-based exponential decay applied to total time across all three stages. The formula has a 30-second half-life: finishing all three stages in 10 seconds yields roughly 7,900 points, 30 seconds gives 5,000, one minute gives about 2,500, and two minutes gives around 625. Every catch and stage reset adds tens of seconds to your total and meaningfully drops your score. Efficient collection routes and chaser avoidance are both critical to a competitive result.
Coin Maze
Slide through a maze, collect every coin, and stay ahead of the chaser across three stages.
Read the board before your first move. Your first input starts the chaser clock. Spending two to three seconds scanning the coin layout before committing to an initial direction is almost always worthwhile. Identify a starting route that clusters nearby coins together and avoids immediately crossing to a distant section of the maze. A poor opening forces long backtracking while the chaser is already moving.
Chain coin clusters before crossing the maze. Nearby coins can often be collected with two or three slides. Clearing a local cluster efficiently is almost always better than crossing the maze to reach a distant coin first, because long slides are hard to reverse without giving the chaser free approach time. When you identify a group of three or four coins near each other, collect them as a unit before moving on.
Use the chaser's predictability against it. The chaser always takes the shortest walkable path to your current position. This means it favors the main corridors. Once you understand which corridors are most direct to where you are standing, you can time your departures from those corridors to stay ahead. Retreating into a dead-end section to collect isolated coins while the chaser takes a long route around is a viable tactic in many stages — the key is knowing whether the detour around is actually longer than your escape window.
Build escape routes into your collection order. When deciding between two nearby coins, choose the one whose collection path leaves you more exit options afterward, not just the one closest to your current position. A coin that is slightly farther but that takes you toward a branching corridor is safer than a closer coin that slides you into a dead end with the chaser approaching.
Do not let working memory overwhelm you. Tracking the coin layout, your slide physics, and the chaser simultaneously is demanding. If you feel disoriented, take a moment to re-identify the largest remaining coin cluster and commit to heading there next. Chasing individual stray coins in sequence without a plan is inefficient and exposes you to catches more than a cluster-first approach.
Move immediately after a catch. When a stage resets, you restart at the same initial position with the same chaser spawn delay. Your first few moves after each catch are safe. Use that window to re-establish an efficient route before the pressure returns. Hesitating after a catch wastes the only guaranteed safe window the stage gives you.
