3D maze chase
Time Runner
Running on borrowed time.
The game runs right here in the page — portrait or landscape, whichever way you are holding the phone. Nothing to download, and no account needed.
- Players
- One player · no account, no sign-in
- Plays on
- Desktop, laptop, Chromebook, tablet and phone · keyboard or on-screen joystick
- Quick controls
- Arrow keys / WASD · Space for your special
About Time Runner
Time Runner takes the five locations from David D. Gibson's picture book Switching Shoes — the playground, the house, the fair, the school and the city — and turns each of them into a maze you have to survive. It is the only game we have made that grew directly out of one of our books, and the connection is more than decorative: the places are the book's places, in the book's order.
The premise is a clock. You start with seconds, not lives, and those seconds are always going down. Scattered through every maze are numbers, and every number you collect buys back a little time. That single mechanic turns a maze chase into something closer to a resource problem — you cannot simply hide, because hiding costs you the thing you are running out of.
Chasing you are four alarm clocks, and they do not all behave the same way. One comes straight at you, one cuts ahead to where you are going to be, one patrols and only commits when you get close. Learning which is which is most of the difficulty curve, because a route that escapes the chaser will run you directly into the one that was waiting.
Screenshots
What Time Runner looks like
The Playground — the first of the five locations from Switching Shoes. Collect the numbers to buy back seconds.
The Fair. Every maze has its own layout and color, and every round runs faster than the last.
The City, the final location. Four alarm clocks hunt you, and each one hunts differently.
Guide
How to play Time Runner
- 01
1. Pick your hero
The Phone can VANISH — disappear completely for three and a half seconds, which walks you through a corridor that was closed a moment ago. The Grandfather Clock can FREEZE — stop time and every alarm clock for three seconds, which is better when you are surrounded rather than blocked. You get three uses per maze either way. Vanish is the safer first choice; Freeze is the stronger one once you can read the chase.
- 02
2. Collect numbers to buy time
The bar at the top is your life. Every number you pick up adds seconds to it. Nothing else refills it meaningfully, so the whole game is a loop of spending time to reach numbers that give time back — and the mazes are laid out so the richest routes are the ones the alarm clocks patrol.
- 03
3. Learn what the four clocks do
One chases your current position directly. One aims four tiles ahead of where you are facing, so it arrives where you were going rather than where you are. One patrols its own area and only breaks off to hunt when you come near. The fourth is unpredictable by design. Doubling back is far more effective against the ambusher than outrunning it.
- 04
4. Use hourglasses and hide alcoves
Spinning hourglasses scare the clocks off and bank a large chunk of time at once — they are the closest thing to a reset button and they are worth planning a route around. Glowing HIDE alcoves shelter you: while you are in one the clocks lose interest and scatter. Your timer keeps running in there, so an alcove is a breath, not a hiding place.
- 05
5. Manage the camera
This is a 3D maze, which means walls block your view of what is around the corner. CAM cycles the viewpoint and X-RAY lets you see through the walls for a moment. Most avoidable deaths come from committing to a turn without checking what is behind it — X-ray before a blind junction, not after.
- 06
6. Survive fifteen rounds
Five mazes, three rounds each. Every round runs faster than the last, so a maze you cleared comfortably on round one will feel genuinely tight by round three. Clearing all fifteen finishes the game.
Full controls
| Action | Keyboard | Touch |
|---|---|---|
| Move | Arrow keys, or W A S D | Drag the on-screen joystick |
| Special (Vanish / Freeze) | Spacebar, or G | Tap the special button |
| Change camera | C | Tap CAM |
| Rotate camera | Q and E | Tap CAM to cycle |
| X-ray vision | X | Tap X-RAY |
| Pause | P | Tap the pause button |
Scoring and progression
Time is the resource, not the score
Running out of time costs a life, exactly as being caught does. Treat the clock as a second health bar that drains whether or not anything has touched you.
Numbers and hourglasses
Numbers are steady small refills spread through the maze. Hourglasses are rare, large, and additionally scare the clocks — the difference between them is worth a detour.
Fifteen levels, escalating
Three rounds per maze, five mazes, everything faster each round. Progress is linear, so the honest measure of how you are doing is how deep into the fifteen you get.
Tips for getting further
- Do not stand still to think. Standing still costs time in a way it does not in any other maze game.
- Against the ambusher, reverse. It aims where you are pointed, so a reversal makes its lead a liability.
- Save one special for the last third of a round. Running out of charges early is how good runs end.
- X-ray before a blind corner, not after you have already turned into it.
- Hourglasses are worth a detour that numbers are not — they buy time and clear the board at once.
- Use hide alcoves to break a chase, then leave immediately. The timer does not pause for you in there.