Play Kleidí: The Lamp of Psyche — a free find-the-key maze game of Greek myth
Kleidí: The Lamp of Psyche is a free browser-based find-the-key maze game built on Greek myth, and it is played one sealed room at a time. Eros fled Aphrodite's palace before dawn and left his lamp burning on the sill. When Psyche reached for it the flame went out — not blown out, taken — and the light broke into shards that fell through the floor of the house like coins through a grate. Aphrodite, who had arranged the whole night, gave her four trials and thirty locked rooms: in each one she must gather every shard, take the key the light reveals, and open the door.
What makes this more than a maze is that the maze is read, not rushed. Every room is a single screen with a fixed patrol, a fixed set of gates and a key that does not exist until the lamp is whole — so the puzzle is the order you do things in, not how fast you can press a key. There are no timers and nothing chases you. The shades walk a route they will walk again, and the fourth beat of every four is mist.
How to play
- Walk one tile at a time. Arrow keys, WASD, a swipe on the board, the on-screen pad, or a tap on a far tile — Psyche will take the shortest walk she can see.
- Collect every shard. A shard is picked up by walking onto it. The counter in the header shows how many the room holds.
- Take the key. When the last shard is collected, Kleidí appears on the board. It does nothing until then, which is the point.
- Open the door. The door refuses you until you carry the key. Stepping into it finishes the room.
- Gates and sigils. A gate blocks one tile of the only path. Its sigil is always placed on the near side, so a gate can cost you a detour but never the room.
- Slabs and runes. A pressure rune opens the slab tied to it permanently. The slab is always somewhere you have already walked past.
- Shades. Each shade walks a fixed loop, one tile per beat. It is solid on three beats and mist on the fourth. Wait with Space to change your beat.
- Mirrors. Two mirrors are one door. Step into either and you come out of the other.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys / WASD | Walk one tile |
| Tap or click a tile | Walk to it, one tile at a time |
| Swipe | Walk one tile in the swipe direction |
| Space | Wait one beat — the only way to change the shade rhythm |
| H | Spend a hint (three per room) |
| R | Restart the room |
| Esc | Pause |
| M | Mute the synthesised sound |
The rules, exactly
| Mechanic | What it does | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Shard | Collected by walking onto it | Nothing — but the key needs all of them |
| Key | Appears only with the last shard | A walk back across the room |
| Gate | Blocks one tile until its sigil is taken | A detour, never the room |
| Pressure rune | Opens its slab permanently | One step on the wrong side of the room |
| Shade | Solid on three beats, mist on the fourth | Waiting — and reading the patrol line |
| Mirror | Moves you to its pair | The walk you thought you were taking |
| Nothing else fails | No timer, no chase, no losing state | Only the door can end a room |
Find-the-key maze, labyrinth and escape room
| Kleidí (this game) | Classic maze | Escape room | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you are given | One screen, a fixed patrol, a lamp in pieces | A grid and an exit | A room of objects |
| What you do | Choose an order: shards, sigils, runes, key, door | Find the path | Find the combination |
| The pressure | Three beats solid, one beat mist | Dead ends | Hunting for the one hotspot |
| Failure | None — you can always walk it again | Getting lost | Pixel hunting |
| Guarantee | Every room is solved before it ships | Usually checked | Rarely checked |
The four acts
| Act | Rooms | Where you are | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| I · The Ivory Palace | 1–8 | Aphrodite's house, before the seeds are sorted | Shards, the key, the door, then bronze and silver sigils |
| II · The Sun-Meadow | 9–16 | The meadow where the sun's rams graze | Shades that count, and mirrors in the grass |
| III · The Styx Gorge | 17–24 | The black stair above the river | Pressure runes, slabs, two shades at once |
| IV · The House of Hades | 25–30 | Below the house, where there are no lamps | Darkness, memory, and everything at once |
Why par is a number you can trust
Every room shows a par, and it is measured rather than invented. A room is built from a fixed seed, then the same engine the game runs on searches for the shortest winning walk — every shard, the key, the door, with gates, slabs and the shade beat respected — and the room is rejected if no such walk exists. Par is that walk's length. The test suite then replays the walk through the player-facing move function, one tile at a time, and compares the two counts; it also follows the in-game hint from the start of every room to the door to prove the hint cannot lead you into a wall.
The story, briefly
Aphrodite's jealousy is the engine of the story and the lamp is its clock. Psyche is given the four tasks every schoolbook knows — the seeds, the golden wool, the flask from the Styx, the box from the underworld — but the game stages them as rooms rather than cutscenes. The palace is ivory and lamplit; the meadow is amber and watched; the gorge is wet black stone that presses underfoot; the house below the house has no light at all and a floor that remembers your steps. She opens the box, of course. What comes out is not a curse but a sleep, and it is Eros who wakes her.
Strategy that actually works
- Read the whole room before the first step. The shard count, the gate colours and the key's corner tell you the order; the walking is the easy part.
- Take the sigil before you need it. A gate is only expensive if you meet it first and have to walk back.
- Count the beat. Three solid, one mist. If a shade is between you and a shard, step on the fourth beat, not the first.
- Use the key's position. It sits at the far end of the room, so the last shard is usually on the way there.
- Tap, don't walk. A tap on a far tile walks the shortest path; use it while you think about the next order.
Technical notes
Everything here is generated: no image is loaded, no audio file is played, no third-party script runs. The floor, the walls, the shards, the shades, the sigils and the door are Canvas 2D, drawn from the same seeded room data the solver uses; sound is synthesised with the Web Audio API at the moment it is needed. Progress and stars live in your own browser under kleidi.save.v1. The campaign suite rebuilds all thirty rooms from their seeds and asserts the contract before anything ships: every room is solvable, par equals a fresh solve, par equals a replay through the player's own move function, every sigil is on the near side of its gate, and every shade patrol is on the floor.
Frequently asked questions
What is Kleidí: The Lamp of Psyche?
It is a free browser find-the-key maze game built on Greek myth. Eros' lamp shattered when he fled Aphrodite's palace, and its light fell through thirty sealed rooms as shards. You are Psyche: gather every shard in a room, take the key it reveals, and open the door that leads to the next one.
How do you play a room?
Move one tile at a time with the arrow keys, WASD, a swipe, or the on-screen pad. Walk over a light shard to collect it. When every shard in the room is yours the key appears; stand on it to take it, then step into the door. Gates, pressure slabs, mirrors and shades get in the way from Act II onward.
What are the shades, and why do they stop?
Shades are the dead who count the meadow. Each one walks a fixed patrol, one tile per beat, and is solid for three beats out of four — on the fourth beat it is mist and you can walk through it. The four pips in the HUD show the beat you are on. You can always wait a beat with Space; the patrol never changes.
Is every room solvable, and what is par?
Yes, and par is measured rather than estimated. Each room is built from a fixed seed, then solved by the same engine the game runs on before the room is allowed to ship. Par is the length of that shortest winning walk: collect every shard, take the key, reach the door. Three stars means you found a walk within about a tenth of it.
Does it work on a phone, and does it need a download?
No download, no install and no account. It is one HTML5 page with no external assets — the floor, the shards, the shades and every sound are generated in the browser — and it runs on desktop, tablet and phone down to a 320-pixel screen.
How long is it?
Thirty rooms across four acts, from a three-shard room in Aphrodite's palace to the dark house below the house, where you carry no lamp and the floor remembers where you have been. A room takes two to five minutes; the campaign is about two hours at a walking pace.