Maze Defense
In Maze Defense there is no road. Enemies enter through two gates on the left and walk to the exit on the right, always taking the shortest open route across the grid. Every tower and wall you build changes that route, so your defense and your maze are the same thing.
The engine recalculates the route every time you build. You can make the path as long and winding as you like, but you can never block it completely: a placement that would cut off every route is rejected, and you cannot build on a tile an enemy is standing on or walking into.
Play Maze Defense
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How to Play
- Pick Wall (1) or a tower (2–5) and tap any empty tile. The dotted lines show the current enemy routes.
- Walls cost 10 gold and do not attack. Use them to force long detours past your towers.
- Build damage towers where the maze turns, so enemies stay in range longer.
- Start each wave with N. Earn gold from kills and wave bonuses and keep extending the maze.
- Selling a wall or tower reopens the tile (70% refund). Survive all 20 waves, including The Monolith.
Controls
Every action works with touch, mouse or keyboard. Hover is never required.
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Tap / click a tower button, then a tile | Build a tower (highlighted tiles are buildable) |
| Tap / click a built tower | Open its panel: upgrade, sell, targeting |
| 1 – 6 | Select a tower type |
| Arrow keys + Enter | Move the map cursor and build or select on that tile |
| N | Start the next wave |
| Space or P | Pause / resume |
| F | Cycle speed: 1×, 2×, 3× |
| U / Delete | Upgrade / sell the selected tower |
| T | Change the selected tower's targeting mode |
| M | Sound on / off |
| Esc | Cancel building or close the tower panel |
Towers
- Wall10 gold. No attack. The cheapest way to lengthen the route.
- Bolt Tower50 gold. Balanced damage.
- Scatter Tower80 gold. Splash damage for enemies bunched in corridors.
- Frost Tower70 gold. Slows enemies inside your maze.
- Longshot90 gold. Long range (5 tiles); covers several corridors at once.
Every tower sells for 70% of everything spent on it. Upgrade costs are shown on the upgrade button.
Enemies
- CrawlerStandard enemy.
- SprinterFast.
- HulkSlow, high health.
- PlatedArmored.
- SwarmlingWeak, comes in large groups.
- The Monolith (boss)Wave 20. Releases swarmlings at 66% and 33% health.
Strategy Tips
- Watch the dotted route lines after every placement. If a wall made the route shorter, sell it.
- Build switchbacks: rows of walls with a gap at alternating ends force enemies to walk the full width of the field each time.
- Both gates feed the same exit. Make the two routes merge early so every tower covers both streams.
- Put Longshots in the middle of your maze where their 5-tile range reaches three or four corridors.
- Walls are cheap but gold-inefficient late. By wave 10, spend most of your gold on tower upgrades.
- You cannot build on a tile an enemy is entering, so finish major maze changes between waves.
About Maze Defense
Maze Defense uses a breadth-first search distance field: every open tile knows its step distance to the exit, and each enemy moves to the neighbouring tile that is closer. That makes routing fast enough to recompute after every placement and lets the game check that a route always exists before accepting a build.
It is the most open-ended game on the site. Two players can finish with completely different mazes, and the best designs usually combine a long path with a small number of heavily upgraded towers at the turns.
