Is there a screensaver that walks through a maze?

Maze walk does just that. Part of the classic pack in Screensavers by Zaweba, it takes a first-person walk through a newly generated maze until it finds a glowing light, then starts again in a fresh one. You choose the walls, the size of the maze and how fast you walk.

Many people remember a 3D maze screensaver from older versions of Windows. Maze walk isn't a copy of it. It's Zaweba's own code from the ground up, with its own wall textures and its own maze generator, and it's named plainly for what it does.

How the walk works

Each maze is generated new, so you never walk the same one twice. The walker uses the right-hand rule, the old trick of keeping one hand on the wall and following it. It's guaranteed to find the way out of a simple maze eventually, though not by the shortest route, which is part of the charm: you watch it turn into dead ends, double back and press on. When it reaches the glowing light, a new maze appears.

Choosing the walls

The walls setting has stone blocks, garden hedge, glazed tiles, wooden planks or a mix. The textures are generated in code rather than taken from photographs, so they're all original. Stone blocks give a castle dungeon feel. Garden hedge looks like a stately home maze on a summer day. Glazed tiles feel oddly like a Victorian swimming bath. Wooden planks are warm and rustic. The mix changes from wall to wall and keeps things lively.

Size and speed

Maze size runs from 5 to 25. A small maze is solved quickly, so you see lots of new mazes and lots of glowing lights. A large one makes a long, winding walk, better if you like the feeling of being properly lost. Walking speed runs from 1 to 10. Slow walking is calming; fast walking feels like a chase.

Maze walk is rendered at half resolution and scaled up, which keeps the work for the computer light. On a laptop, you can also set a frame cap of 30 or 60 frames a second in Install and options, and the battery saver blanks the screen below a chosen charge, 25 per cent by default.

Entering the maze from the manager

Open Screensavers by Zaweba and choose Maze walk. The live preview plays beside the settings and changes as you change them. Press Preview full screen to walk a maze at full size, then press Use this screensaver. That builds it into your Windows profile, with no administrator rights needed, and opens Windows' Screen Saver Settings, where you choose it and set the wait time.

Settings are read every time the screensaver starts, so you can switch from hedges to stone next week without reinstalling. Reset to defaults puts everything back if you want to start again.

On more than one screen

With several monitors you can run one maze on each, stretch one across them all for a wide, cinematic corridor, or keep it on the main monitor and let the others go black. One on each monitor is fun: several walkers, each lost in its own maze.

If you like Maze walk, you may also enjoy the night pack's racing screensavers, which take a similar first-person view at a very different pace. Tick a few and use Install several to get one that picks at random each time.