Stairs that go up into stairs that go down. Landings that float in the dark with nothing holding them up. Flights that cross over and under each other until you can't tell which floor you're on. Stairwell is a maze made of nothing but stairs, and somewhere inside it is the way out.
The idea
It started with an ink drawing: a tangle of staircases, each one leading into the next, with small faceless figures climbing in every direction. I wanted to walk around inside it. Stairwell is that drawing turned into a place you can explore.
Every staircase fills exactly one cube of space, rising from the cube's floor to its ceiling at 45 degrees. Stack those cubes side by side and on top of each other and you get a building that folds back over itself, like something Escher might have sketched.
How to play
You arrive through a cool blue entrance gate. Your goal is the warm exit gate, somewhere else in the stairwell, and you have to find the stairway route that reaches it.
- Walk by holding an arrow on the on-screen pad, or an arrow key or WASD. Hold two keys to walk diagonally. You can move freely in any direction, turn whenever you like, and stop on the spot the moment you let go, even halfway up a flight.
- Drag to turn the view, pinch or use − and + to zoom.
- Floors above you turn to see-through glass with drawn outlines, so you never lose sight of yourself.
- Stuck? Thread (or H) lays a red dashed path along the stairs to the exit for a few seconds.
- Forgotten the controls? ? opens the How to play panel at any time.
The hunters
You are the blue figure. The red figures are hunters. They wander the stairs, and once you are within twelve landings they come straight for you. The screen edges glow red and a low pulse rises in the music as they close in.
You have three lives per level. A touch from a hunter costs one, throws the hunter back a landing and leaves it dazed for a moment. And you can fight: Strike (the round button at the bottom left, or Space or F) sends out a shockwave that knocks out every hunter within reach. It recharges in under two seconds, so time it well.
Five difficulties, one set of levels
The levels are the same whichever difficulty you pick. The difficulty only changes how many hunters you face.
| Difficulty | Hunters |
|---|---|
| Rookie: I just want to have fun | none |
| Easy: Go easy, I'm still learning | 1 to 4 |
| Normal: Give me a fair fight | 1 to 7 |
| Hard: Make me work for it | 2 to 10 |
| World War Z: They come in waves. Hundreds of them. | 3 to 14, plus a new wave every 30 seconds |
Levels that never end
The first five levels are a gentle start: a small stairwell only two floors tall. From level six it grows a new floor every level and widens every two levels, until it becomes a full cube of stairs eleven landings wide and eleven floors high. After that the levels keep coming, and the hunters keep multiplying. There is no last level.
Seven worlds
Pick a look from the Theme menu:
- Aurora Glass: frosted glass stairs under a violet, star-filled night
- Concrete Void: pale stone floating in a dark fog
- Paper & Ink: white paper and hard black lines, closest to the original drawing
- Desert Dusk: sandstone flights in a rose-gold sunset
- Glacier: polished ice in cold arctic light
- Neon Grid: dark glass with glowing cyan edges
- Mossy Ruins: weathered pale stone in a dark green starfield
Your progress, saved
Enter your name in the Player & saves panel and Stairwell keeps your records: your best level, levels cleared, hunters knocked out and times caught. There are three save slots, so you can stop halfway through a big level and pick up from the same spot later, plus an autosave each time you clear a level. Everything is kept in your browser on that device.
Sound
The music is generated live in your browser: a slow, airy pad that drifts between four chords, with glassy chimes floating over it. Footsteps, the strike shockwave and the exit chime are made the same way, so there are no sound files to download. Tap the speaker next to the title (or press M) to turn it off.
Plays anywhere
Stairwell runs in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, in portrait or landscape. On a phone held sideways the panels tuck away to give the maze more room. Left-handed, or prefer it the other way round? Theme → Controls swaps the move pad and the Strike button. On iPhone and iPad, sound plays only when the ring/silent switch is off.
Credits
Built with three.js. The figures are "X Bot" from Mixamo.