Mowing Mazes — Play Free Online

Mowing Mazes is a cheerful puzzle game from Protostar, the studio behind Sling Kong, that turns a simple chore into a proper brain-teaser. You sit a little gardener on a ride-on mower and set about tidying a garden that has grown into a maze. Each level is one overgrown plot: cut every blade of grass, grab whatever the level hides, and find your way out through the gate on the far side.

The hook for a Doodle Jump fan is the same one that keeps that game so easy to return to: a round is short, the next level is always one more try away, and there is nothing to install or set up. Where Doodle Jump tests your reflexes, Mowing Mazes tests your planning. You have to read the whole maze and chart a route that leaves no patch un-mowed before you reach the exit.

How to play

Steer with the arrow keys or WASD. On a phone or tablet, swipe in the direction you want to travel; on desktop you can also steer with the mouse. Every level has the same job — mow the entire lawn and reach the gate — but most of them hide a catch: a locked door that needs a key, a treasure chest tucked in a corner, or a jump that has to be lined up just so.

There is no timer rushing you. You earn money for each cleared lawn, which you spend on upgrades and skins for your gardener, and the layouts get steadily more tangled as you climb the leagues and try to escape the Evermaze.

Tips

• Read the whole maze before you move. Mowing is a route-finding puzzle, so spotting the corners and dead ends first means far less doubling back later.
• Grab keys before you head for the gate. Many exits stay locked until you have the key, and it is quicker to detour on the way than to cross the entire lawn a second time.
• Cut in a steady pattern, like a spiral or row by row. Leaving one patch stranded in a corner is the easiest way to end up re-doing a level.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

If you enjoy the planning side of Mowing Mazes, Fireboy and Watergirl turns route-finding into a two-player puzzle platformer, and Bloons Tower Defense 2 moves the same strategic thinking onto a bigger map full of balloons. Helix Jump goes the other way — a fast reflex game about guiding a bouncing ball down a spiral tower.

Mowing Mazes suits short, relaxed sessions. It is quiet enough for a coffee break and sharp enough that clearing a hard maze feels earned, on a laptop, a Chromebook or a phone.