THE OFFICIAL DESIGN CODEX

THE MAZE CODEX

Everything the builders know about the labyrinth: its rules, its economy, and its future.

I.The World

Every midnight, the maze rebuilds itself.

THE MAZE is a daily labyrinth adventure that runs in the browser. Nothing to install, nothing to download. Once every 24 hours, a new maze is generated for the entire world. Every explorer of the same rank walks the same corridors on the same day, hunting the same goal: find the Ancient Keys, awaken the Ancient Gate, and escape before the maze collapses, all while the Warden hunts by sound and lantern-light. The labyrinth grows with your streak: Novices walk an 8x8 maze, and by Mythic rank the same midnight builds you an 11x11 one, with more keys, more traps and less light.

THE MAZE is a game first. Its token exists to power the game, never the other way around.

II.The Daily Ritual

One lantern. One attempt. One midnight deadline.

One real attempt per day. Your lantern holds a few minutes of light. It begins burning the moment you first enter, and refreshing the page does not refill it.
Three keys, each guarded. Keys hide in the far corners of the labyrinth behind riddles and puzzles. Wrong answers cost time; time is light.
Traps are decided with your feet. Every trap is visible before you reach it, and no trap ever seals the only route, so there is always another corridor. Step on one and it fires: it drains light and tells the Warden where you are. Five mechanisms exist and each punishes you differently, so learn them by their markings and route around the ones you cannot afford.
The Warden never sleeps. It patrols, it listens, it hunts. Its lunge is telegraphed, so escape is always possible for the calm.
The Gate and the collapse. Every key set, the vault door splits open, and the ceiling lets go. The maze then eats itself from the vault outward: stone fissures, then falls, and a fallen room cannot be crossed again. Run for the violet fire at the entrance, marked on your minimap from the first step, and do not double back.
Failure is real. When the light dies, the day is lost. Practice mode stays open, but the reward belongs to those who escape.

III.The Light Economy

Light is the only currency inside the maze.

Everything in a run is priced in seconds of lantern light: puzzle mistakes, traps, the Warden's touch, and gambles like the Dark Chest all spend it; vials of light and clever routing earn it back. This gives THE MAZE something most daily games lack: a real fail state. Escape rates are meant to be uncomfortable. A day where most explorers are swallowed is a day working as designed.

The Vault. Each day carries a posted reward pool, and it settles exactly once, at midnight, like a daily tournament. Until the maze dies, no share is final: a hunter who escapes in the last hour with a cleaner run rightfully shrinks every earlier slice.

Your share is earned, not fixed. Escaping earns you vault points, and the pot is divided in proportion to them. The sum is deliberately simple: one point per second of light left, multiplied by your rank (Novice 1× up to Mythic 10×). Nothing else counts.
Time ranks you. Light pays you. The leaderboard is ordered by how fast you escaped, and that is pride alone. Not one cent follows from your position on it: the vault only counts the light in your lantern when you reached daylight. The fastest hunter of the day can earn less than the careful one below them.
Leave with a dead lantern and you leave with nothing. Escaping on fumes wins the day, the streak and the leaderboard place, but no light means no points, and no points means no share. If every escapee finishes on empty, the pot splits evenly rather than paying no one.
The maze is free. The Vault is not. Anyone can walk the maze, always, with nothing installed and nothing connected. But the vault pays wallets, not names: connect a wallet before you run and your escape is payable; an anonymous escape earns nothing, because there is no address to send a share to. Once the gate is lit, the ranked maze, the leaderboard and the Vault belong to hunters holding $MAZE; everyone else keeps walking free, and their runs stay off the board.
Clean runs pay. Every trap sprung and riddle missed burns light, and burned light is burned treasure.
The hour never matters. Your lantern starts when you first step in. Playing at dawn or at dusk changes nothing; only how you run does.
A lone escapee takes the whole vault. And when nobody escapes, the entire pot rolls into tomorrow, so every dark day grows the next one's treasure.
Settlement is public. Shares are paid out within a day of midnight, and every payout transaction is posted for anyone to verify.

The maze always pays its debts to someone.

How a day divides.

Three hunters escape the same day. The pot is whatever the vault holds that day, so the only honest way to read a share is as a slice of it. None of these three are ordered by speed, because speed is not what the vault counts.

Streak	Rank	Light	Points	Share
day 1	Novice 1×	50s	50	25%
day 9	Hunter 2.5×	20s	50	25%
day 21	Shadow 5×	20s	100	50%

Each hunter's points are their seconds of light times their rank: 50 × 1 = 50, then 20 × 2.5 = 50, then 20 × 5 = 100. That is 200 points on the day, so a share is simply a hunter's own points out of those 200. The shares always add up to the whole pot; the vault never keeps a remainder.

Two lessons sit in that table. Compare the last two rows: identical light, and the older streak takes exactly twice the pot. A rank is not a badge, it is a multiplier bought with consecutive days and paid for in difficulty. That Shadow banked their 20 seconds inside a 10x10 maze on a 3:12 lantern.

Then compare the first two: a newcomer who banked 50 seconds where the Hunter managed 20 earns exactly the same slice. Skill answers rank. Veterans are favoured, never guaranteed, and a first-day hunter who runs a clean maze walks away with real treasure.

IV.Progression & Ranks

The maze remembers who returns.

Consecutive days of play build a streak, and streaks unlock ranks. Higher ranks face a crueler maze with more traps, less light, and harder puzzles, and they multiply the rewards for it.

Rank	Streak	The maze you walk	Points ×
Novice	0+	8x8 · 3 keys · 4:00	1×
Hunter	7+	9x9 · 3 keys · 3:36	2.5×
Shadow	14+	10x10 · 4 keys · 3:12	5×
Mythic	30+	11x11 · 4 keys · 2:48	10×

Every rank also brings more traps and tighter puzzle countdowns. The labyrinth itself grows with the streak, so a multiplier is never free money: a Mythic hunter earns ten times the points because they are solving a maze nearly twice the size of a Novice's on two thirds of the light.

Miss a day and the streak burns out, unless a torch earned every seventh day covers the absence. Experience levels, achievements, and secret discoveries accumulate for life.

V.Fairness & Anti-Cheat

Same maze for everyone. Same chances for everyone.

The walls are shared. Each day's layout is derived from a server-held secret seed, revealed only to authenticated players, so it cannot be computed in advance.
The contents are yours alone. Key locations, trap placements, puzzles, and the Warden's patrol are derived per-explorer. Scouting with a second account teaches you corridors, never answers.
The clock is honest. Your attempt timer starts at first entry and survives refreshes, closed tabs, and reconnects. There is no free second look.
Results are verified server-side. Leaderboard entries and rewards are validated against issued seeds and recorded attempts.

VI.The Engine Beneath: Solana

Machinery, not mythology.

THE MAZE runs its reward layer on Solana because a daily game needs what Solana offers: settlement in seconds and fees near zero, every single day.

The $MAZE key. In gated play, holding $MAZE is the entry ticket to the daily labyrinth. The token is access and reward, full stop.
Wallet sign-in. Explorers authenticate by signing a message with their wallet. No passwords, no email, nothing to leak.
On-chain reward pools. Daily pools and payouts settle on-chain, where anyone can verify them.
The marketplace to come. Cosmetics such as cloaks, lanterns, and gate skins will be earned in the game and owned by the explorer. It will feel like a game inventory, because that is what it is.

What $MAZE is not. $MAZE is not an investment, and nothing in this codex is financial advice. It is a game key with in-game utility. No returns are promised. Never spend what you cannot afford to lose. The maze already takes enough.

VII.The Odyssey

A world built chapter by chapter.

Development moves through chapters, not quarters. Pre-Alpha, The Forging, is complete: the maze engine, daily generation, the Ancient Gate, the Warden, traps, and this reveal. Ahead lie First Explorers (public alpha, founder program, Season Zero), The Hunt Begins (ranked seasons, multiple Wardens), The Forgotten Realms (new labyrinth environments), The Explorer Marketplace (earned cosmetics), and Legends of the Maze (guilds, expeditions, championships). No dates are promised. Chapters open when they are worthy.

VIII.Principles

The game comes first. Every decision is judged as game design before anything else.
Failure must be possible, or victory means nothing.
Every death should feel like the explorer's own mistake, never the maze cheating.
No manufactured hype, no impossible promises, no countdown theater.
The earliest explorers shape what the maze becomes.