Maze Chase Game: Chomp

Advanced Guide to Chomp

Chomp is a maze chase game. You steer Mossle, a round plum-furred dormouse with big ears and a hinged jaw, through a glowing tower floor and eat every mote on it. Motes are small dust-gold specks, one on nearly every open corridor cell. Up to four haunts drift through the same halls and want to catch you. Eat the last mote and the floor is cleared, the maze lights up gold and Mossle climbs the stairs to the next one.

Movement is on a grid and never stops by itself: press an arrow key or a WASD key and Mossle runs until it hits a wall. You can press a turn early, before you reach the junction. The game remembers it for about a second and a half and takes the turn at the first cell where it is open, so quick play feels smooth. Pressing the opposite way turns you around at once. On a phone or tablet, swipe anywhere on the play field, or switch on the on-screen d-pad.

The Four Haunts and How Each One Hunts

The haunts do not all run straight at you. Each has its own rule, and learning the four rules is most of the skill in Chomp. They also take turns between two moods: for a few seconds they patrol a lap of their own corner, then they chase, then they patrol again, and in the end they chase for good.

• Drizzle, the pale blue teardrop, goes straight for the tile you are standing on and leaves wet marks on the floor. It leaves the nook in the middle of the maze first.
• Wick, the orange candle flame, aims at the tile three cells ahead of where you are heading. Running down a long corridor toward Wick is a mistake, because it meets you halfway.
• Gloam, the violet hooded cloak, follows your footprints. It targets the place you stood twelve steps ago, so it is always behind you and punishes anyone who backs up along the same path.
• Fidget, the green spiky burr, picks a random open cell within about eight cells of you at each junction, so it is hard to predict; if you are more than fourteen cells away it simply heads for you. Its speed also swings between a little slower and a little faster than the others every two seconds.

Haunts never reverse when their mood changes. They keep their direction and decide again at the next junction, which means you can read where one is going to turn.

Moonstones and the Hush

Every floor has four moonstones, placed symmetrically around the maze. Swallowing one starts the Hush: the haunts turn pale, shrink, lose their glow and stumble around at slow speed, and for a short time you can eat them. The first haunt you eat in a Hush is worth 200 points, then 400, 800 and 1600, so eating all four in one Hush is worth the detour. An eaten haunt becomes two eyes that race back to the nook and then leaves again to hunt you. A second moonstone in the middle of a Hush resets the timer and the chain.

The Hush is longest on the first floor, about seven seconds, and gets a little shorter on every floor up the tower until it settles at one and a half seconds. In the last second and a half the haunts flash, which is your warning to stop chasing and turn away.

Hearts, Stars and the Lantern Charm

You start every floor with three hearts. Meeting a haunt costs one: Mossle spins into a puff, the haunts go home, and the motes you already ate stay eaten. Lose the third heart and the tower pushes you back to retry the same floor at once, with the motes restored and no penalty. Beating a wing boss earns an extra heart on the Climb, up to five.

Each floor is worth up to three stars. One star is for clearing the floor, one for clearing it without losing a heart, and one for beating the floor’s par time. Twice per floor, after you have eaten 20 motes and again after 40, a lantern charm hangs in the lane just below the nook for nine seconds. Grab it for 100 points times the floor number.

Forty Floors, Eight Wings and a Boss at the End of Each

The Gloamtower has 40 floors in eight wings of five. The first wing, the Cellar, teaches the basics and brings in the haunts one by one: floor one has only Drizzle, floor two adds Wick, floor three adds Gloam and floor four adds Fidget. The side tunnel in the Cellar wraps you from one edge of the maze to the other, and haunts crawl through it slowly, so it is the best escape route.

Each wing after the Cellar brings its own floor rule, and every floor of that wing uses it: locked doors and keys in the Pantry, a dark floor in the Unlit Hall, conveyor belts in the Conveyor Loft, one-way gates on the Weathercock Stair, crumbling tiles in the Rotting Gallery, portals in the Mirror Attic and switch-gates in the Moon Room. The fifth floor of every wing is a boss, and each boss has its own trick:

• The Hollow Butler (Cellar) can only be bitten while a Hush is running, and it needs three bites over three separate Hushes. Each bite makes it faster and opens a wall in the maze.
• The Locksmith (Pantry) keeps the nook shut behind three key rings. Each moonstone breaks one ring; then bite the Locksmith in a Hush and grab the key ring it drops.
• The Snuffer (Unlit Hall) puts the light out for four seconds out of every twelve. Walk onto its three candles to keep the hall lit.
• The Beltmaster (Conveyor Loft) reverses every belt every ten seconds. Swallow three moonstones while standing on a belt, then bite it in a Hush while it is on one.
• The Weathercock (Weathercock Stair) turns every one-way gate around every fifteen seconds, and a Hush holds them still. It takes three bites, each in a Hush.
• The Mother of Moths (Rotting Gallery) scatters moths and rots the floorboards. Eat twelve of her moths to drive her out.
• The Doppelgänger (Mirror Attic) is your own shadow, replaying your path four seconds late and hurting on contact. Swallow the numbered moonstones in order, 1-2-3, to banish it.
• The Moon King (Moon Room) sleeps until you have pressed all four pads to dim his lamps; then he wakes, and one bite in a Hush ends him.

A boss floor is cleared by eating every mote and beating the boss. Most boss floors send the boss plus three of the four regular haunts; the Moon King’s floor has all four. Clearing floor 40 plays an ending scene on the tower’s roof.

Tips and Strategy

• Save a moonstone for a crowd. Wait until several haunts are close, then swallow it. A Hush with four haunts in reach is worth far more than one with a single haunt far away.
• Use the side tunnel to break a chase. Every wing except the Unlit Hall has one. You cross it at full speed while haunts slow to a crawl, so you gain several cells every time.
• Do not retrace your steps while Gloam is out. Gloam walks your old trail, so a long loop shakes it and a U-turn walks into it.
• Look at where Wick is, not at Wick. It is aiming three cells in front of you, so turn off the corridor it is lined up with and it overshoots.
• Press turns early. The buffered turn is the whole trick of tight play. Tap the next direction as you approach a junction and Mossle takes the corner the instant it can.
• Do not hoard stones on a boss floor. On the Butler’s floor a moonstone you swallow grows back about twelve seconds later while the boss lives, so use one as soon as the Butler is close.

Modes, Progress and Saving

The Climb is the main mode and is saved: Continue on the title screen takes you back to the next floor you have not cleared. Your stars, best scores and best times for every floor are kept in your browser, so you can go back and chase three stars on any floor you have unlocked. The Endless Climb runs the tower’s floors in order, boss floors included, and starts again at floor 1 after floor 40, with the speed capped at its floor-40 level. You get three hearts for the whole run with no retries, plus one extra heart the first time you pass 20,000 points. It is the one mode that sends a score to the leaderboard. The Daily maze is one bonus maze a day, the same for everyone (the day changes at midnight UTC), with four haunts, three hearts and no critter perks; clearing it on consecutive days builds a day streak.

Clear enough stars and you unlock five more critters to climb with: Tansy makes the Hush half a second longer, Quill lets a turn work a quarter of a cell early, Pebble forgives the first haunt that catches you on each floor, Ember keeps the lantern charm out four seconds longer, and Nimbus draws nearby motes toward you. Mossle, the starting critter, has no perk. There are 120 stars in the tower.

Press P or Escape to pause, M to mute. The game also pauses by itself when you switch tabs. Sound, reduced motion, a relaxed pace and the on-screen d-pad are all in Settings. There is no sign-up and nothing to download.

A Brief History of Maze Chase Games

The maze chase is one of the oldest shapes in video games. A single player runs through a corridor maze, eats a trail of dots and is hunted by pursuers, and a power item flips the chase for a few seconds. The idea became a coin-op staple around the start of the 1980s and spawned a long line of clones, sequels and reinventions, from home computers to the web. Its appeal is that the rules fit in one sentence, the maze can be read at a glance, and the four pursuers behave differently enough that the chase feels alive. Chomp keeps that core and gives it a haunted tower, forty authored floors and a boss to beat at the top of every wing.