Maze (beta)

Maze is in beta. It is playable today and marked BETA in the app because it is still being developed — scoring, layouts and graphics may change between updates.

Maze is a cue-ball control game. With its own themes the room plays dark: the table light switches off when the game starts, and the only light on the cloth is a path projected by FusionCue. Pick Lights on instead and the table light stays on. Either way, your job is to get the cue ball from one end of that path to the other without touching its walls.

How a game works

1. Place the ball. Set a ball on the start spot. There is no button: once it sits still on the spot for a second the game starts (the line under the headline turns green while it waits). Every layout starts the same way.
2. One shot per leg. Every route is a series of legs. Roll the ball along the lit path and stop it inside the landing zone at the next bend. Some legs include a bank: the path meets a rail at 45° and you have to play the ball off the cushion to reach the zone.
3. Set the ball, shoot again. Land in the zone and you shoot the next leg from where the ball lies (you may move it anywhere inside the zone first). If the ball scored but came to rest against a wall, or you missed the zone, the path goes dark except for the zone itself: set the ball inside the spinning ring there and the path comes back for the next leg. A ball that fits inside the ring is always accepted.
4. Next layout. After the last leg a new route appears. Every route is generated fresh, and your score carries across all of them.

Scoring

Result	Points
Ball stops in the landing zone	+3
Ball stops short, still on the path	−1
Ball touches a wall while rolling	−2 per touch
Ball leaves the path	−2

A bank off the cushion is part of the path, not a wall touch.

Settings

Choose a theme on the Maze start page, then set the rest in the pre-play settings. They are remembered for next time.

• Theme — Electric Fence (a white path with plasma walls; touch one and the fence strikes a bolt of lightning from that spot and the field goes red) or Plank (a wooden walkway over a clear, shallow pond — sand, stones, weed and fish below; go over the edge and it's a splash, the fish scatter, and a shark comes for the ball where it has rolled to, leaving blood in the water). On the Plank the light slowly swings from afternoon sun to a golden dusk and back, and a few white clouds drift over the pond and the walkway. Lights on keeps the table light on: the path is drawn in simple drill-style lines, with no effects or end scenes. The game and its scoring are exactly the same.
• Path thickness — 1.5 to 4 balls wide.
• Turns — 1 to 6 per route.
• Layouts — 1 to 30 routes per game.
• Brightness — how bright the path is. The same slider is on the game screen: turn it up or down if the camera stops seeing the ball.

NEW LAYOUT on the game screen swaps the current route for a fresh one and removes the shots already taken on it. In a match it sits beside the headline and on the shooter's card, while the route can still be redrawn.

Fixing the score (the − and + either side of POINTS on the game screen, under the score on the results) moves the score a point at a time when the table charged a wall touch that never happened, or missed one. The phone remote has the same Score +1 / −1 buttons while Maze is running. Corrections are kept if you reroll the layout and are saved with the game.

Playing with others

Pick LOCAL MULTI or INTERNET beside PLAY on the Maze start page.

• Local multiplayer — 2 to 6 players take turns at one table, one whole layout per turn. Repeat layouts gives everyone the round's same route; Unique per player gives each player their own route with the same number of turns.
• Internet — invite online players. You take turns, each on your own table, one whole layout a turn, and the shooter's table is shown to everyone else.
• The player cards show everyone's score. Tap a card to fix a score. Online, the game screen shows every other player's live table instead, with your leg, your actions and the standings on the right — tap a table or a standings row to fix a score.
• Online, a player's card counts the layout they're playing leg by leg, and a layout that loses points (wall hits, lost balls) counts below zero — online the same as at one table.
• Go Live and Record show every player and their score on the bottom bar, with the player who's up outlined.

Things to know

• Electric Fence and Plank need a dark room. Maze lights the ball with the projected path itself. If you use a supported smart plug, the table light turns off when the game starts and comes back when it ends. Want the light on? Pick Lights on.
• Any ball works. Whatever ball is on the path is the game ball.
• Go Live, Record and ball-path graphics work the same as in the other games, and every shot is saved to your game stats.