About Corridor Vault
A first-person maze of stone corridors on a grid, walked a cell at a time and turned in ninety-degree steps — exact rather than slippery, and playable with two thumbs. Colour-coded doors are locked and the key for each one is hidden a few turns away, always off the direct line to the exit, so the route that looks shortest is never the route you take. Every floor is generated with a solution that is proved rather than assumed and a detour that is guaranteed, and the exit landing is always further than it looks. Your lamp is the only reason you can see the next corner: it burns one step at a time and it IS the draw distance, so running low is something you watch close in around you before it is something you read off a bar. Oil flasks are in the dead ends, which is the bargain — eight steps spent to buy thirty-eight back. Drawn by the portal's own renderer with real converted models in it, and it makes no network request of any kind.
How to play
- Each vault is a freshly generated maze. Step one cell at a time and turn in ninety-degree steps.
- Find the key for each coloured door. Walk into a door while carrying its key and it opens as you pass through.
- Every step burns one unit of lamp, and the light closes in as it runs down. Turning and standing still cost nothing.
- Reach the landing at the far end and press USE. Then go deeper into a larger vault, or leave and bank your coins.
- If the lamp reaches zero, the run is over and the coins you were carrying are lost. Only leaving from a landing banks them.
Tips
- Stop and look. Only steps burn light. Turn a full circle at every junction before choosing a branch; it costs nothing and shows each open corridor as far as your lamp reaches.
- The key is off the route. Each key is placed away from the direct line between the start and the exit. If a corridor heads straight for the exit, the key is probably down a side branch.
- Dead ends pay. Oil flasks sit only in dead ends and each one restores 38 units of lamp. A short cul-de-sac is often worth walking when the lamp is below half.
- Read the map. The corner map marks every cell you have seen, plus doors in their colour, keys still on the floor and the landing. Blank patches on it show where you have not looked yet.
- Arrive with light. Light left at the landing pays 0.35 coins a unit, and the next vault starts with a full lamp anyway. A flask taken at full lamp is wasted, because the lamp cannot go past its maximum.
Read the full Corridor Vault guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Corridor Vault is a first-person maze of stone corridors that I built on 10 September. You move a cell at a time and turn in ninety-degree steps, so movement is exact and it plays with two thumbs. Colour-coded doors are locked and each key is off the direct line to the exit. The lamp is the fail state, the clock and the fog distance at once. It runs on the same small WebGL renderer as Facet Circuit, in plain JavaScript.
It was the first of my games to draw imported models, and that exposed a gap: the model loader parsed everything without complaint but ignored textures, which would have drawn everything in flat colour without an error. I only found it by reading pixels back. The same checks found that every wall was wound backwards, so a boundary wall showed as a frame of fog.
On 17 September I changed the coin rule. The decision to go deeper or leave with the coins was the core of the game on paper, but every ending banked your coins, so leaving early protected nothing. Now only leaving at a landing keeps them. The models come from POLYGON Prototype Pack by Synty Studios, with colours baked in so no textures ship.
Son Hoang, who made Corridor Vault
Update history
- Added looping cavern music from Vasco Grossmann's Fantasy Music Lite.
- Coins are now kept only when you leave at a landing. Letting the lamp go out or abandoning mid-vault loses what you carry, and the pause button shows the cost.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; flame colours cost the same coins.
- Real loading bar, and the lantern screen no longer overflows on short windows.
- Every model is now from Synty's POLYGON Prototype pack: floor, exit steps, crates, barrel, chest, coins, keys, oil flask and wall lamps.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: a first-person maze walked a cell at a time, with colour-coded doors and a lamp that burns down.
Questions
Does Corridor Vault save my progress?
Yes, in your browser's local storage. It keeps your banked coins, flame colours, deepest vault and vault count, plus the run in progress: vault, position, facing, lamp, keys, opened doors and the map you have revealed. Erase progress on the title screen clears it.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. A touchscreen shows step forward, back and turn pads under your left thumb and a USE button under your right. On a keyboard, arrows or WASD move and turn, and SPACE uses the landing.
What happens when the lamp goes out?
The run ends and the coins you were carrying are lost; only leaving from a landing banks them. Ending a run from the pause sheet mid-vault loses them too. Your next run starts again from vault 1.
Is there a last vault?
No. Vaults keep going, getting larger until vault 7, where they stay at 13×13 with three doors. The goal is to beat your deepest vault.
