Click Play, or press any game key.
Keyboard: arrows, X = A, Z = B, A = Start, S = Select. Gamepads work too (up to four).
Warlock's Maze an NES game for 1-4 players
Warlock's Maze is an original game for the Nintendo Entertainment System: a maze shooter for one to four players at once, in the style of the early-1980s arcade dungeon shooters. Rangers go into the Warlock's dungeons to clear out his monsters. Prowlers and Stalkers turn invisible and show only on the radar; shoot the fleeing Wisp to make the next dungeon score double, and watch for the Warlock himself.
Click Play, or press any game key.
The dungeons
Each ranger starts in a cage under the maze and has ten seconds to step out. Every dungeon opens with six Snarlers; as they fall, Prowlers arrive, and each Prowler that dies calls up a Stalker. The fewer monsters are left, the faster they move: the heartbeat speeds up with them. The doors on the left and right sides link the edges of the maze and slam shut for a few seconds after anyone uses them. Dungeon 4 is the Coliseum and dungeon 13 the Void; reaching either gives each ranger a bonus. From dungeon 8 the monsters start faster.
The cast
| Snarler | 100 | always visible |
| Prowler | 200 | turns invisible |
| Stalker | 500 | turns invisible, the fastest |
| Wisp | 1000 | flees for a side door; shot down, the next dungeon scores double |
| The Warlock | 2500 | teleports and fires bolts |
A bonus ranger at 10,000 points. The top eight scores are kept with initials (here, in this browser).
The cartridge
Written from scratch in 6502 assembly for an MMC3 cartridge (128 KB program ROM, 32 KB graphics ROM, 8 KB battery RAM for the high scores). The graphics, music, sound effects, speech and maze layouts are all new. It reads an NES Four Score or a Famicom four-player adapter and keeps its pace on PAL consoles. Made by BX Foundry with Claude Code.
Download the ROM (for emulators and NES flash carts)
