Maze Courier

How to play Maze Courier

1. Press Start delivery for the first street, or choose any unlocked route from Route select.
2. Walk over a parcel to pick it up. The satchel holds one parcel at a time.
3. Carry it to the postbox with the same letter and colour: A amber, B teal, C violet.
4. Watch the patrols. The CHASE or ROUNDS sign under the town shows whether they are hunting you.
5. Ring the bell to pull patrols away, or grab a clock key and tag the pale carts.
6. Post every parcel, then walk home to H to finish the route and collect your stars.

Controls

About Maze Courier

Maze Courier is an original retro maze game about delivering the post. Instead of clearing every corridor, you read a small pixel town, pick up one parcel at a time and carry it to the postbox with the same letter. A parcels go to the amber box, B parcels to the teal box and, from the Canal Quarter onward, C parcels to the violet box. Colours are always paired with printed letters, so the task never depends on telling colours apart. When every parcel is posted, walk back to the H step outside your post office to finish the route.

The campaign has 24 hand-made street plans split into four districts of six. Every plan is a braided town with no dead ends and no open plazas, so there is always a second way around a patrol. Opening streets carry three or four parcels and a single patrol; the final streets hold up to seven parcels and four patrols moving a little faster. Automated checks confirm that every street is connected, that every landmark can be reached in both the wide and the tall layout, and that a simple test courier can clear each route against live patrols.

The courier keeps walking in the last chosen direction and stops at a wall. A turn pressed early is remembered for about a second and taken at the next opening, and pressing the opposite direction turns you back instantly, even between tiles. Carrying a parcel slows you slightly, which makes the walk to a distant postbox the tense part of each delivery. Collisions are judged on where the sprites actually are, so a courier and a patrol can never slip through each other on the same street.

Patrols are clockwork carts with their own habits. Rusty follows you street by street. Snips ignores you and heads for your next stop, whether that is the parcel you are likely to collect or the box you are carrying to. Beacon walks a beat around the town and charges when it spots you down a straight street. Moth wanders at random until it is close, then follows. All of them alternate between making their rounds and giving chase; the sign under the town and the colour of their eyes show which. Carts parked at their depots are still winding up and cannot catch you.

You have two tools. Each route gives you three bells: ringing one leaves a lure on the spot, and every active patrol heads there for a few seconds, so ring and then walk away. From Clockwork Square onward, clock keys lie in the streets. Picking one up winds every patrol down: they turn pale, slow down and flee, and tagging them earns 150, 300, 600 and then 1,200 points as each spent key rolls back to its depot. The districts add their own rules. Canal Quarter underpasses carry you to the opposite edge and slow patrols inside them. Station Row level crossings flash, then close while a train passes, and nobody can enter them. Night Service streets are dark apart from your lantern, the street lamps and the glow of patrol lamps and postbox letters.

A collision costs one of three hearts and returns the parcel you were carrying to where you found it; posted parcels stay posted. Each delivery scores 250 points, and a quick delivery after a pickup adds an express bonus that grows while you keep the streak going. Slipping past a patrol at arm’s length without being caught earns a 50-point close call. Finishing adds a bonus for remaining hearts, unused bells and your time against par. Every route has three stars: one for the delivery, one for keeping every heart and one for getting home under par. Stars and best scores never go backwards when you replay.

Overtime is an endless shift available from the start. Parcels keep arriving at random corners of the town, every third delivery wakes another patrol, and the carts speed up as the shift goes on. Every fifth delivery returns a bell, a clock key appears every few parcels, and every eighth delivery moves you to the next district and restores a heart. The shift ends when your hearts run out, and your best score and delivery count are saved.

The town is drawn in code as original low-resolution pixel art: tiled roofs over shop fronts, parks, canals with quays, railway sidings with goods trains and lamp-lit night streets. There are no borrowed mazes, characters, music or artwork. Short synthesized tones mark pickups, deliveries, keys and captures, and the sound switch keeps play silent if you prefer. On a tall phone screen the whole town turns to fill the height, and on a sideways phone the controls move beside the town. Reduced-motion settings remove screen shake and flashes. Unlocks, stars, best scores and your Overtime record stay in this browser, and progress from the earlier twelve-street version is carried over.

A few useful tricks

• Snips waits by your next stop. Collecting a different parcel first can pull it out of your way.
• Beacon only charges down straight streets. Turn a corner and it loses sight of you.
• Ring the bell a junction ahead, then walk away from it. Standing beside your own lure brings the patrols to you.
• Save a clock key for the moment two patrols close in, then chase the pale carts for a growing tag bonus.
• Underpasses slow patrols down, which makes them a good escape route in the Canal Quarter.
• Level crossing lights flash before the barriers drop. Cross early or take another street.
• Quick deliveries straight after a pickup build an express streak worth more each time.

Good questions