MazePawn is a two-player abstract strategy game on a nine-by-nine grid. You have one pawn and ten walls. So does your opponent. You win by walking your pawn to the far side of the board before they walk theirs to yours — and the walls exist to make their walk longer. A game takes about five minutes, the rules take about two, and there is exactly one rule that stops the whole thing being unfair.
Everything below is the same material the in-app tutorial teaches, in the same order. If you would rather learn it on a real board with the rules enforced for you, the tutorial is free and needs no account.
MazePawn is a race. You are Orange at the bottom — reach any square on the top row and you win. Teal is racing the other way, to the bottom row.
Any square on that row counts, which matters more than it sounds. You are never obliged to travel in a straight line, and a wall that closes one column has not closed the row — it has only made you walk around it. The whole tactical game comes out of that: walls buy your opponent extra steps, and the player who spends those steps most efficiently arrives first.
On your turn you either move your pawn OR place a wall — never both. Pawns step one square up, down, left or right. Never diagonally (except for one special case you will meet shortly).
This is the trade that makes the game. Every wall you place is a turn you did not spend walking, so a wall that costs your opponent only one extra step has cost you exactly as much as it cost them, and you have gained nothing. Walls are worth playing when they cost the other player several steps at once, or when they close the short route at the exact moment your opponent was about to take it.
Players alternate turns. Orange moves first, and in MazePawn the opening seat alternates between games, so nobody keeps the first-move advantage game after game.
Instead of moving you can drop a wall. A wall is always two squares long and sits in the groove between squares, blocking anyone who tries to cross it. Hold anywhere on the board and swipe: swipe across for a horizontal wall, up or down for a vertical one.
With a mouse the gesture is the same one: press on the board and drag sideways for a horizontal wall, or up and down for a vertical one. A wall sits between squares rather than on them, so it never occupies a square a pawn could stand on.
Two further constraints follow from a wall being two squares long. A wall cannot overlap another wall, and it cannot cross one at right angles. And because it blocks both squares it spans, a single wall placed well can lengthen a route by far more than the two steps it looks like it costs — that is what you are hunting for.
Walls belong to nobody once placed. They block you exactly as much as they block your opponent, which is the most common way a new player loses: a wall built to trap someone else turns out to be sitting across your own shortest route home.
Pawns never share a square, and they never block each other for long: when you are standing face to face with your opponent, you may jump straight over them and land on the square beyond.
A jump is one turn and moves you two squares, so meeting your opponent head on is a small gift rather than an obstacle. This is why trying to block someone with your own pawn does not work — standing in their way simply hands them a free extra square.
If a wall (or the board edge) sits right behind your opponent, you cannot land there — so instead you are allowed to jump diagonally, to either side of them. This is the only time a pawn moves diagonally.
So the rule is: straight jump if the square behind them is free; diagonal jump to either side if it is not. Between ordinary steps, straight jumps and diagonal jumps, that is every way a pawn can ever move in MazePawn. There is nothing else to learn about movement.
The most important rule in MazePawn: a wall may slow an opponent down, but it may never leave them with no route at all. The game simply refuses any wall that would completely trap either player.
Read that twice, because it is the rule the whole game balances on. Without it the first player to spend a few walls could simply build a box and end the game by construction. With it, walls can only ever cost steps. Every position therefore always has a path for both players, and every game is always still a race.
It applies to both players, including you. A wall that would seal off your own route is refused just as firmly, which catches people out when they are building a corridor and close the last gap in it from the wrong side.
MazePawn checks this for you before the wall lands. If a placement would leave either pawn with no route to its target row, the board refuses it and your wall stays in your hand. You cannot make this mistake by accident and you cannot lose to it.
You start with ten walls and so does your opponent. A wall you place is gone for good, and you cannot pick it back up. Since a wall can never stop someone — only detour them — the real question every turn is: does this wall cost my opponent more steps than it costs me?
Ten is fewer than it feels. Spend them early to slow an opponent who is not yet committed to a route and they will simply walk a different way for free. Run out entirely and you have no answer left when they start building against you — from that point on, all you can do is run.
The game ends the moment a pawn steps onto any square of the opposite row. There are no captures, no piece is ever removed, and there is no draw: because neither player can ever be sealed in, a route always exists for both, and somebody always arrives first.
That is the entire game: move or wall, race to the far side, jump when you meet, and never seal anyone in. Everything else is strategy — and the fastest way to pick that up is to play.
There is more on all of this in the strategy guide, and the questions people ask most are answered separately.
MazePawn is free in your browser, with no account and no download. Play the computer at six strengths, work through the interactive tutorial, solve puzzles, or play another person online.