Hyper-Maze is a four-dimensional maze game with a simple 80x25 screen interface. It is available in source form without any warranty.

The game was inspired by the maze games in the OICCC:

buzzard.c by Sean Barrett (1991)

dodsond2.c by Don Dodson (1995)

The maze consists of a four-dimensional cube sliced in many little cubicles, the same way a square, i.e., a 2-D cube, can be partitioned in many little squares arranged in a grid as in the figure below.



Each cubicle is a room in the maze and is described by its four coordinates in the slicing on the big cube, just like two coordinates are sufficient to describe the position of a little square in the grid of the 2-D square.

Each room has (at most) eight nearby rooms, one to the left, one to the right, one in front, one back, one above, one below, one forward (in the fourth dimension), and one backward. A room that touches a side of the big cube has fewer nearby rooms, like the little squares on the side of the big square have less than four nearby little squares.

Since this is a maze, it is not possible to move from a room to all its nearby rooms; there are walls that prevent this, and one can go from one room to a nearby room only if there is a door in the wall between the two.

The player starts in a room deep inside the maze and must get to the exit room (the only room with a door leading out of the maze).

From his/her point of view the player, standing in a room, sees eight walls. Some of the walls (at least one) have a door that leads to a nearby room. Each wall has a mark that indicates the direction: the four directions are denoted by the four suits of the play-cards, hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, respectively. There is also an arrow, indicating whether the coordinate increases (uparrow) or decreases (downarrow) crossing the wall.

The room coordinates, specifying the absolute position of the room in the maze-cube, appear on the top of the screen to help the player.

The player can turn him/herself around by pressing the left and right arrow keys. Effectively he/she sees the walls flow on the screen in front of him/her.

When he/she is in front of a door he/she can enter the nearby room by pressing the forward arrow key.

The game is over when the player reaches the exit room.

Marco Corvi - 1998