Blind Labyrinth

Code and Canvas Labs

About this game

Slide one finger from the start to the finish through a maze you never see.

Blind Labyrinth is a maze game with nothing on the screen. Walls, sliding blocks, turning bars and electric fences announce themselves through sound and vibration alone, and the way through is something you hear and feel rather than look at.

HOW IT PLAYS

Put a finger on the glass and keep it there. Your fingertip moves exactly as far as your finger does, so you cannot tap the finish to win — the maze exists all around it.

• Walls — a low hum rises in pitch and grows louder as you close in, from the side the wall is on, while the phone buzzes harder and faster. Touch anything you should not, by any amount, and you go back to the start.
• The finish — a plucked note repeats faster the nearer you get and sounds from the direction you should go. This is what you steer by.
• Moving parts — every sliding block and turning bar has its own voice, placed around your head rather than panned between the speakers, and fading with distance. Wait for it, then go. Worth headphones.
• Electric fences — still lines you can walk straight through most of the time, which buzz for a second before they bite. The question stops being where and becomes when.
• Lift your finger and you go back to the start, and the dot is no longer in your hand until you have found it again.
• Two fingers on the screen speak the bearing and distance to the finish. Three fingers pause.
• Points — twenty a level. The clock starts when your fingertip moves, not when you find it, so the search is free. The first ten seconds are free too, then a point a second, and a point for every reset. Your score is read out the moment you finish, and your best is kept against every level.

36 levels across six chapters, from a single straight corridor to rooms full of crossing projectiles, turning walls and live wires. Every level begins in the same place — the bottom middle of the screen — so the one fact you can be told about the screen holds for the whole game.

BUILT FOR PLAYERS WHO CANNOT SEE THE SCREEN

• Works fully with TalkBack — every menu is a real control with a real label.
• Works fully without TalkBack — the game explores by touch and speaks for itself, so no screen reader is needed.
• Every menu is three slabs: top, middle and bottom, each the full width of the screen and a palm tall, and all three are read out by position. The choices are where your hand already knows they are.
• A spoken tutorial, and a spoken briefing for any level, whenever you want one.
• Speech and sound can each be turned off, sped up or turned down, and you can choose the voice. Vibration is always on, at full strength, and uses real intensity rather than just on and off, so distance is something you can feel rather than count.
• Pure black and white with one accent colour. Nothing depends on colour alone.
• There is no difficulty setting: the game is strict for everyone, because how nearly you may touch a wall before it counts is the whole game.

NO STRINGS

No adverts. No in-app purchases. No account. No analytics. The app has no internet permission at all, so it cannot send anything anywhere, and every level works offline.

What’s new

First public release.