SURGE

Pac-Man with a memory. Every tile you cross stays electrified for three seconds — your route is your weapon.

Objective

Sweep every charge cell out of the circuit-board maze while four daemons hunt you. Wherever you walk, the floor stays hot for 3s; a daemon that crosses a live trail tile gets fried, dropping back to its spawn as eyes. Clear all cells to advance the level. Lose all 3 lives and the run ends.

Controls

Input	Action
← ↑ ↓ →	Move (also W A S D)
Swipe	On touch, swipe any direction; one drag can chain turns
Tap / Space	Start, advance "READY", move to next level
P	Pause / resume

How it works

• Charge cells — the small cyan dots. Worth +10 each. The maze is clear when none remain.
• The trail — every tile you step on glows white-hot, then cools to cyan, and fades over 180 frames (3s). Daemons that arrive on a live tile are fried instantly — but only when they're in normal active state. Fleeing daemons and eyes are immune.
• Daemon archetypes — four hunters cycle through the spawner. Scanner (orange) BFS-paths straight at you. Predictor (red) aims 4 tiles ahead of your current heading. Patroller (purple) walks a perimeter loop. Walker (green) picks random directions at junctions.
• Capacitors — the four large yellow nodes in the corners. Worth +50, and they invert polarity for 8s: every active daemon turns blue, flees, and can be eaten on contact.
• Eyes return home — a fried or eaten daemon becomes eyes, sprints back to the spawn house at 0.22 tiles/frame, then re-enters play after a short cooldown. You cannot kill eyes.
• Tunnels & speed — the side gaps wrap around the board. You move at 0.12 tiles/frame; daemons start around 0.076 and gain +1.5% per level, capped at 90% of your speed so you always have an out.
• Level clear — clearing the maze pays 1000 × (level + 1) and loads the next layout.

Scoring

• Charge cell: +10.
• Capacitor: +50 plus the 8s polarity window.
• Fry by trail: 200, 400, 800, 1600 as the streak climbs. The streak resets on death or when you finish the maze.
• Eat while polarity is inverted: same ladder — 200, 400, 800, 1600 — but it resets at the start of each capacitor window.
• Capacitor sweep: eat all 4 daemons inside a single polarity window for a +5000 bonus.
• Level clear bonus: 1000 × (level + 1) — level 1 pays 1000, level 5 pays 5000.

Strategy

• Loop, don't backtrack. A daemon that turns to chase you walks into your fresh trail. Tight rectangular loops around a pursuer fry it in a tile or two; long straight runs let it cool off before you double back.
• Bait the scanner first. The orange BFS daemon is the most predictable — it commits to the shortest path. Lead it onto a corner you just left, and the trail does the work. The walker is the least worth chasing; let it wander.
• Save capacitors for crowds. A capacitor with one daemon nearby is +200; one with all four in range is +1600 + +5000 = +6600. If you can pull pursuers together before grabbing it, the sweep bonus is the biggest single score in the game.
• Watch the polarity timer. Daemons blink white in the last ~1.5s of the 8s window. If you're committing to a fourth eat for the sweep and they're already flashing, you won't reach them in time — bail and farm trail-kills instead.
• Use the tunnel as a reset. Wrapping around the side gap drops you out far from your last trail. It's a clean escape when daemons cluster, and it lets the patroller wander off your route.
• Late levels reward circles. By the time daemons hit the 90% speed cap, head-on escape is borderline. Plan a route that has a live trail in front of you and a fresh one being laid behind — you're effectively a moving wall.
• The predictor punishes straight lines. The red one aims 4 tiles ahead. Change direction at intersections to make its lead-target overshoot into an empty corridor.

Play SURGE →