Blackout Maze

How to Play Blackout Maze

This blackout maze flips the classic arcade formula: the whole board is a total blackout, and the only thing you can see is a golden ring of flashlight glowing around your runner. Move with the arrow keys, WASD, a swipe on the maze, or the on-screen pad. Every pellet you walk over inside the beam is collected automatically — clear every glowing dot on the board to finish the maze and advance to the next level. Bump into a ghost and you lose a life; lose all three and it's game over. Your score, level, and high score are tracked live in the heads-up display above the maze, and your best run is saved right in your browser so you can try to beat it next time.

The Flashlight Mechanic

Instead of a fully lit board, Blackout Maze renders the maze as a radial fog of war: walls, pellets, and ghosts only exist for your eyes inside the moving circle of light. Walls you've already passed stay faintly visible in memory so you can retrace your route, but pellets and danger only ever show up under the beam. The catch: the higher your score climbs, the tighter that circle gets, so early game feels generous and late game feels claustrophobic. Look out for the larger pulsing battery pellets scattered around the maze — grab one and your flashlight flares brighter for a few seconds, buying you room to breathe and see further into the dark.

Ghosts Lurking in the Dark

You won't see a ghost's full body until it drifts inside your beam, but its eyes give it away first. Watch the edge of your flashlight ring for a pair of glowing red eyes flickering in and out of the darkness — that's a ghost tracking you from just beyond what you can see. Some ghosts hunt aggressively and beeline straight for you the moment they're loose from the glowing den at the center of the maze; others wander more unpredictably and only close in when you stray close. Ghosts are released one at a time at the start of each level, so the opening seconds are your best window to grab easy pellets before the maze gets crowded.

Tips & Strategy for a High Score

• Clear the outer corridors first while your flashlight is at its widest — it only shrinks as your score grows.
• Save battery pellets for when a ghost's eyes appear at the edge of your beam; the extra light gives you time to route around it.
• Listen and watch for glinting red eyes before committing to a corridor — reacting a half-second sooner is often the difference between a clean escape and losing a life.
• The four-way tunnel corridor at the maze's vertical center lets you cross from one side to the other instantly — use it to shake off a chasing ghost.
• Ghosts can't turn around instantly. Cutting a corner they just passed is usually safer than trying to outrun one down a straight corridor.
• Every cleared maze adds another ghost and shrinks your starting beam, so bank score early and stay calm as the board gets tighter.

Why We Built a Blackout Maze

The original arcade maze chase is a genre classic precisely because it's simple: eat the dots, avoid the ghosts. We wanted to keep that simplicity intact while adding real tension without adding complexity, so instead of new rules we took something away — the light. A shrinking flashlight turns a familiar maze into a memory game, a reflex test, and a horror-lite chase all at once, and it means no two runs feel quite the same even though the maze itself never changes. It's a small twist built entirely for the browser: no downloads, no accounts, nothing blocking the maze itself — just an empty page, a dark maze, and your beam of light.

Frequently Asked Questions