Dear guardians,

While the adventurer still believes he can escape, your toolbox is more stocked than ever...

This third major update provides you with a wide range of new cards to refine your strategies, strengthen your monsters, and manipulate the game to your advantage.

The itinerant merchant is also delighted: he now has many new items to sell.

Two new monsters to add to your grimoire... discover them in the maze !

🂠 Morphing Roll - With the Morphing Roll, you can more easily obtain the monster you are looking for (if it can be placed). Simply select a monster from the same family.

🂠 Roll of Plenty - Need specific cards? The Roll of Plenty offers you a panel of 18 cards to build your next hand and put your plan into action.

🂠 Omniflask - The Omniflask is a very special potion… when you use it, Potion cards are offered to you at half price. Among these cards, you can find brand-new potions available only this way: Stat Bottles, which permanently boost one of the selected monster's stats.

🂠 Jack-in-the-box - Scares the adventurer and makes him move back 3 tiles.

🂠 Push Trap - Pushes the adventurer back 3 tiles and can cause push damage.

🂠 Poisoned Trap - Inflicts 2 poison damage. (The adventurer takes 2 damage each time he moves.)

🂠 Pack Up Tile - Have you placed an obstacle on the wrong tile? A monster or element is no longer useful to you and you want to sell it to the merchant? This action allows you to empty a tile of its elements to put them in your stock (depending on the space available).

🂠 Catalysis Potion - This potion allows you to make one of your monsters drop loot without it having to die. So you can speed up your strategy and place certain monsters much faster!

🂠 Tranquilizer Dart - It reduces the adventurer's anger by half!

🂠 Lava Extractor - This action is similar to the Catalysis potion, but is reserved for dragons (who are allergic to potions). A puddle of lava appears under the selected dragon. If a puddle is already present, it becomes a lava lake. This makes higher-level dragons more easily accessible.

🂠 Slot Machine - Place slot machines along the adventurer's path to distract him. He could win an item, but the dice are loaded, and he has a 90% chance of losing.

His anger gauge fills when he loses. When his anger reaches its maximum, he destroys the machine and loses 20% of his anger and 20% of his maximum energy.

But that's not all... Every time the adventurer uses a machine, you get a Free Spin!

You wanted less RNG? Oops...

In addition to being an obstacle for the adventurer, the slot machine is a secondary "mini-game" for you. Try your luck and you just might hit the jackpot!

There's no risk involved in gambling here: it costs you nothing, and all your attempts are at the adventurer's expense! No losses, only profits. The slot machine can get you out of bad situations, and allow you to buy back any items the adventurer might win.

Since the release of Maze Keeper, many of your feedback points have focused on its difficulty.

The game was indeed designed to be tough and unforgiving.

But expectations vary greatly from one player to another, and not everyone is looking for the same kind of experience. Some enjoy facing steep challenges and are determined to overcome them, while others prefer a more flexible, accessible approach... something a little less punishing.

To better suit all playstyles, the difficulty system has been completely reworked.

It is now divided into four distinct levels: EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, EXTREME.

→ For the player, this rebalancing concerns natural gold income, monster healing, natural reroll regeneration and the increase in max rerolls.

→ For the adventurer, this rebalancing concerns his XP gain, the stat bonus of his anger, the stat bonus and the buy-back price of his objects.

This overhaul of the difficulty levels also brings major new features:

Death is no longer permanent in the first two difficulties. You now have two extra lives in EASY mode, and one extra life in MEDIUM mode.

When the adventurer reaches the exit of the labyrinth, you lose a heart and move on to the next turn as if you had defeated him.

Additionally, in EASY mode, losing a life grants you a large amount of gold, and the merchant rushes in to help you get back on your feet!

You now begin each game by choosing a free action pack to help you get off to a good start.

→ In EASY mode, the pack includes: one low-value action (under 100 gold), one medium-value action (under 300 gold), and one powerful high-value action (over 500 gold).

→ In MEDIUM mode, the pack contains only two items: one low-value and one medium-value action.

→ In HARD mode, you are limited to just one low-value action.

→ In EXTREME mode, there is no starting pack.

→ In EASY mode, Totems no longer move. (You can still reposition them using a Runic Magnet.)

→ In MEDIUM mode, Totems move only one tile at a time. They can shift forward or backward by a single tile along the adventurer’s path, staying close to where they were originally placed.

→ In HARD and EXTREME modes, Totem behavior remains unchanged: they move randomly to any tile along the adventurer’s path.

• Story Mode : The Story mode benefits from some of the settings of the MEDIUM difficulty mode, and has therefore been indirectly made easier. Your monsters benefit from better natural healing each turn, totems only move one tile for stages 4 to 8, the adventurer's anger is weaker, and adventurer's items are less expensive and less powerful.

• Stats & Leaderboard : The game now tracks separate statistics based on the difficulty level you play. You can view your detailed stats for each difficulty by hovering over the card in the "Achievements" section. When selecting a difficulty before starting a run, your personal best for each mode will be displayed. Level and score leaderboards can now also be viewed separately for each difficulty.

/!\\ Please note...

Your previous highest level and score will not appear in the detailed stats or in the difficulty-based leaderboards. These stats did not exist before this update, so it's not possible to determine which difficulty your past runs were played on. (However, your old records will still be visible in the global stats and the overall leaderboard.)

Please also note that achievements are now disabled in EASY mode. As a result, your progress on the "Achievements" page may appear reset, since they now rely on these new difficulty-based statistics.

→ Monster draw rates adjusted :

You now have a higher chance of drawing placeable monsters from a given family if you already have several monsters from that family on the board.

→ Golden Reroll now always includes at least one monster of the highest level currently available.

(The new Morphing Roll card benefits from this effect as well.)

→ More frequent Altars : After 10 rerolls without an Altar being offered (when one could have been), an Altar is guaranteed on the next roll.

→ More frequent Totems : After 10 rerolls without a Totem being offered (when one could have been), a Totem is guaranteed on the next roll.

Goldigs have become nearly indispensable in most strategies. It's hard to keep up with the adventurer's pace without relying on their gold generation. Until now, their base price was quite high, and purchasing your first Goldigs could take a serious toll on your wallet…

However, once you passed a certain threshold, their cost became negligible compared to the gold they generated. In the late game, it was possible to accumulate so many Goldigs that you ended up with more gold per turn than you could actually spend.

→ Goldig's base price has been reduced from 500 to 300 gold.

→ Its actual price still depends on the number of Goldigs in the game, but the increase is now exponential rather than linear (+10 gold for the 2nd, +40 for the 3rd, +90 for the 4th, etc.).

Obtaining the first 8 Goldigs is therefore easier, while the following ones are more difficult to acquire.

This adjustment makes it easier to build a solid economy early on, while preventing excessive accumulation later in the game.

→ The Merchant offers all the new cards from this update in his shop.

→ In Story Mode, the Merchant no longer disappears after the first turn and is now available throughout the stage. However, his stock of items will not refill until the next stage.

→ The Merchant can no longer "desire" actions that cost Demon tokens.

→ If you cannot place or use your stocked cards, their icons are grayed out.

→ If your stocked monsters can only be placed using an Altar, their icons appear purple.

→ The XP gained by the adventurer when fighting a monster no longer depends on the monster's cost, but on its current stats. The XP reward now better reflects the monster’s actual strength. A boosted monster (with stat bottles, totems...) will grant more XP than its base version.

→ If the adventurer dies while resting in an attempt to break an obstacle, they now gain Anger based on the amount of overload damage taken. (Overload damage: bonus damage received when the adventurer exceeds their maximum energy limit.)

→ A backup save system has been implemented to prevent data loss or save corruption in case the game crashes during the main save file writing process.

→ The backup file is updated at the start of every turn.

→ When launching the game, if your progress has been reset but a valid backup is available, its data will be automatically imported into your main save.

• The action stock is no longer accessible during the fight against the Maze Demon.

• Using an Upgrade Potion on a Cocoon can now transform it into either a Scarachnee or a Spider Queen (not only Scarachnee).

• Using an Upgrade Potion on a Gobilain can now only turn it into an Ogrilain, no longer into a Guardlain.

• Fixed a bug where Goldigs and Ogrilains could charge their cost again even after being purchased and stored.

• The price of Goldigs and Ogrilains is now correctly updated in the list of placeable monsters.

• The adventurer's Anger now properly affects the XP gained from winning battles against your monsters.

• When the adventurer is killed off-path, Anger no longer reduces to each tile at the start of the next turn.

• Fixed an issue where the Toolbox could offer unaffordable actions.

• Fixed a bug where the Golden Reroll could offer unplaceable monsters.

• Fixed an issue where Totems could be offered even if you didn't have enough gold.

• Fixed a bug where cards could disappear even though you still had usable actions left.

• The storage button is no longer locked on the Golden Reroll card if you have less than 30 gold.

• Fixed a trinket duplication glitch via the storage button.

• Music and sound effect volume settings are no longer reset when closing the Merchant interface.

• Several card descriptions have been reworded.

So come and take control of your new tools... be merciless with the adventurer!

I still have many ideas in store, and future updates will continue to bring new content and further enrich the experience.

I truly hope you enjoy this update and that it meets your expectations. Your feedback is incredibly valuable and helps me steer the game in the right direction.

And if you like these new features, please feel free to leave a review: it's a small gesture, but it makes a big difference for me and for the future of the Maze.

Waen