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About this game
Stealth Runner is a stealth-action puzzle where every room is a timing puzzle built from light and shadow. You guide a small ninja from a spawn pad to a glowing exit door across a gridded floor watched by patrolling guards. Each guard carries a yellow vision cone - thirty-four degrees wide and up to 210 pixels long - and the cone is raycast against walls every frame, so pillars and partitions cast genuine blind spots you can exploit. Step into the light and a warning bar starts to fill; hold the line of sight for 0.8 seconds and you are caught. Break away and the bar drains again over 1.2 seconds. A grab costs one of your three sightings, sends you back to the spawn pad and resets every guard to the start of its route; the third sighting ends the run. Four tools keep you alive. Bushes and crate shadows make you completely invisible, so cones sweep right over you. Sneaking, on a button or Shift, cuts your speed to 45 percent but makes zero noise. Running is fast, yet footsteps startle any guard within 90 pixels: it freezes, glares toward the sound for two seconds, and its sweeping cone now points where you are heading. Stones flip the tables - every level grants two or three. A stone flies for 0.45 seconds, and 1.2 seconds after it lands the nearest guard turns toward the noise and stares for three seconds, opening exactly the lane you need. Thirty handcrafted levels climb from a single guard to five, with longer patrols, wider cones and tighter corridors, and every level carries a solver-verified par time. Finish unseen and under par for three stars, with one sighting for two, and any clear earns one. A level grid tracks stars and unlocks, progress saves automatically, a resume snapshot holds your place, and a Daily Challenge seeded by the UTC date sends every player to the same room each day, with a streak that grows day by day.
How to play
Move by pressing and dragging anywhere on the field, or with WASD / arrow keys - movement is fully eight-directional. Tap the SNEAK button (or Shift) to switch between running and sneaking: sneaking moves at 45% speed with zero noise. Press and hold the STONE button (or the E key), drag to set a landing spot and release to throw; each level grants 2-3 stones and a landed stone turns the nearest guard toward it for 3 seconds after a 1.2 second delay. Stay out of the yellow vision cones, hide inside bushes and crate shadows - they make you fully invisible - and reach the glowing door. You survive three sightings; the third ends the run. Stars: finish unseen and under par for three stars, one sighting for two, any clear earns one. Use LEVELS to replay any unlocked room and DAILY CHALLENGE for the UTC-seeded room of the day.
Tips & Tricks
- Count the patrol rhythm: every guard walks a fixed loop with a 0.6 second pause at each waypoint, so its cone leaves your lane on a beat you can predict.
- Shadows are absolute: bushes and crate shadows block detection completely, so a longer route through cover almost always beats a short dash across the light.
- Sneak when a cone crosses your path and run only in dead zones - running footsteps startle guards within 90 pixels and swing their cone straight at you.
- Save a stone for the final stretch: dropped beside the last guard it buys you a three second window, enough to cross even a wide cone.
Frequently asked questions
How exactly does detection work?
A guard only sees inside its yellow cone and only if no wall blocks the line of sight. Standing in the light fills a warning bar in 0.8 seconds; when it fills, you are caught. Leaving the cone drains the bar over 1.2 seconds, so a brief slip is survivable. Bushes and crate shadows block detection completely - the cone passes over you as if you were not there.
What happens when a guard catches me?
You lose one of three sightings, return to the spawn pad and every guard resets to the start of its patrol route, followed by a 1.5 second grace period to re-plan. The run only ends when the third sighting happens.
How is the par time calculated and how do stars work?
Every level was solved by an independent route planner that models the guards' phase cycles, so par equals the shortest safe route times 1.6. Three stars need a clear with zero sightings under par, two stars survive one sighting, and any clear earns at least one star.
