Fetch!

Introduction

Your master needs something from the Haunted Woods, and you'll have to go there and find it for him! Navigate through a maze in search of the magical ingredients he needs but don't get too lost!

Controls and Instructions

To start the game, you must choose the difficulty level. There is a total of 5 difficulty levels, and you can compare them with the help of this table:

When you start your first game, you'll see that only the first three difficulty levels are available. As you play the game and accumulate points (to accumulate points, you must complete mazes without losing), the other two will be unlocked for you.

After choosing the difficulty level, you'll see the item you must find. There are many different items in the game, but it doesn't matter which of them you are given - the variety is just for making the game less boring, not for any specific features. Click "Enter the Haunted Woods!" and let's go!

There are four important things in the gameplay: the maze map itself, the Tentacompass, the line which shows how many steps you have left and the line which tell you whether you have already found the item or not. Here is the maze map:

The green lines are the walls, the blue lines is the path, the little bald thing in the middle is you :) Note that what you see is a 5x5 piece. But the two columns on the left represent the outside wall and don't count as the part of the map. So, if you choose the 10x10 maze, the map will be actually 14x14 (as 14 is 10 + 2 + 2). Keep it in mind when trying to count how many steps you need to make to reach the opposite side, the maze center, etc.

The thing you see to the right of the maze map is the Tentacompass:

It's the thing you use to move your character. To move one space up, click the upper tentacle. To move one space down, click the lower tentacle. I hope you'll figure out what to click if you want to move left or right by yourself :) Don't forget that you can't click the maze itself to move, always use the Tentacompass!

Tips and Strategies

You have two goals in the game. The first one is to find and pick up the item. The second one is to get out of the maze.

When searching for the item, keep in mind that it is always within one square of the maze center. But the "center" can look different depending on whether the maze width/height is an odd or an even number. The picture below shows the area in which the item can be found in both cases:

After calculating where the item should be, start moving to the center. You must understand, though, that the maze has walls, and it may happen that you're standing right next to the item but can't pick it up because the wall prevents you, and you must go around it. In many cases it leads to wasting too many steps and losing :( But that's the concept of the game. When you have found and picked up an item successfully, start searching for the exit. It is usually somewhere on the opposite side of where you started. But if you started in the corner, the exit might usually be in any of the two corners which are on the same horizontal/vertical side. For example, if you start in the bottom right corner, the exit should be either in the top right corner (vertical side) or in the bottom left corner (horizontal side).

If you have successfully escaped with the item, you will be rewarded. Your reward is the base reward for this difficulty level (see the table above) plus 1/2 points for each step you have left. For example, if you have completed the Easy maze with 10 steps left, you get 101+10/2=106 points (and 106 NP). If you have an odd number of steps left, it rounds down to the even number (so if you had 11 steps left in the previous example instead of 10, you would have gotten 106 points anyway).

Each time you complete the maze, your points get accumulated, and you may get into the high score table. But if you lose, your points get reset to 0, and you have to start all over again. So be careful!

Extra information

I usually use a sheet of checkered paper to help myself keep track of the maze pattern. Here is how (I drew this picture digitally to make it look more clear and nice, but when I play, I draw it on paper):

By doing this step by step, you'll have a pattern of your maze. It will most likely be incomplete, but at least you'll get the basic idea of where to move.

Conclusion

Fetch! isn't a good game to earn NP, but it's easy to get a trophy. Just choose what suits your best: many easy mazes or a few difficult ones, and start going!