At heart, Phantom Circuit is a maze-chase: you clear a grid of glowing orbs while a pack of hunters runs you down. What I added on top of that classic loop is variety — enemies that each solve the "catch the player" problem differently, power-ups that reshape a stage, worlds that change the rules, and bosses that turn the maze into a duel. This guide covers all of it, from the source.
How the maze-chase works
Every stage is the same 28-by-19 grid. You eat small orbs to clear it, and an empty board advances you. Row 11 is a wrap tunnel — run off its left edge and you reappear on the right, the single most important escape route in the game. In the corners sit four large power orbs; eat one and you flip into power mode, where the hunters turn "frightened," reverse away, and become edible for a point chain that climbs with each one you catch in a window.
The hunters don't chase you constantly. They cycle through a fixed scatter/chase rhythm — peeling off to their home corners for a while, then locking back onto you. That heartbeat repeats several times per stage, the scatter breaks shrinking until the final phase is pure, endless chase. Reading that rhythm tells you when it's safe to dive for a far orb versus when to hold near a tunnel.
Your life count is set by difficulty: Chill gives 5 lives and a relaxed pace, Standard is the classic 3 lives, and Ranked hands you only 2 lives, shorter power mode, and faster enemies in exchange for a 1.5× score multiplier.
The hunters and how their AI targets you
This is the part I'm proudest of. Instead of one "ghost" repainted a few colors, each hunter runs its own targeting routine, so a full board feels like being worked by a team. The four founders — Hunter, Ambusher, Patroller, and Shifter — are on the board from stage one; the rest unlock deeper in or in later worlds.
| Hunter | How it hunts you | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Hunter | Chases your exact tile; speeds up as the board empties — faster under 30 orbs, faster still under 10. | Stage 1 |
| Ambusher | Aims four tiles ahead of where you face, cutting you off rather than trailing you. | Stage 1 |
| Patroller | Flanks — it projects a doubled vector from the Hunter past your front to form a pincer. | Stage 1 |
| Shifter | Bold at range, shy up close: chases beyond eight tiles, retreats to its corner when near. | Stage 1 |
| Mirror | Copies your path about 30 steps behind. Slightly slower than the pack. | ~Stage 3 |
| Phaser | Ignores walls entirely — only the outer border stops it — heading straight at you. | ~Stage 5 |
| Sleeper | Dormant until your score passes 2,000, then wakes and joins the chase a touch faster. | ~Stage 7 |
| Splitter | Slow on approach, but bursts into homing fragments — a delayed second threat. | World 3 |
| Anchor | Crawls at about a third speed but locks the orbs around it so you can't finish the stage. | World 5 |
The exact roster shifts with difficulty and world — Chill delays the extra hunters, Ranked front-loads them, World 6 doubles the Splitters — but the founders are always there, so every stage opens with a direct chaser, a cut-off artist, a flanker, and a fickle mid-range threat at once.
Power orbs, pickups, and the Mega Power
Beyond the four corner power orbs, a bonus pickup appears at a fixed spot in the maze at three thresholds as you clear the board — roughly at 30%, 52%, and 76% eaten — and each lingers only about ten seconds before flickering out. The full set:
| Pickup | Effect |
|---|---|
| Fruit | Pure points, scaling by stage — Cherry (100), Lemon (300), Orange (500), Apple (700), Melon (1,000). |
| Speed | A burst of extra move speed for about eight seconds. |
| Freeze | Freezes every hunter in place for about five seconds. |
| Magnet | Pulls nearby orbs toward you for about five seconds. |
| Gem | Doubles your score for about six seconds. |
| Shard | +300 points, and extends the timer if you're already in power mode. |
| Portal | Opens two linked warp gates for about eight seconds — a second shortcut beyond the tunnel. |
| Shield | Absorbs one hit that would otherwise cost you a life. |
The headline system is the Mega Power. Grab a power orb while you're already in power mode and it upgrades into Mega Power: a gold-amber overdrive lasting about eight seconds where your eat-chain pays out bigger, and the one effect strong enough to frighten enemies even in worlds where ordinary power orbs no longer can. Banking a second orb for that overlap, rather than eating them one at a time, is a real scoring skill.
Phantom Circuit plays free in your browser — no download, no login, and your best score saves automatically.
Bosses: turning the maze into a duel
Bosses arrive on the fourth stage and return every fourth stage after. A boss ignores the "eat orbs to win" rule — instead you have to hit it, and the only way to hit a boss is to touch it while you're in power mode. That makes the corner power orbs your ammunition, and each fight becomes a puzzle of baiting the boss near an orb, powering up, and landing a hit before the window closes. Every boss has its own trick and health pool:
| Boss | Gimmick | Hits to kill |
|---|---|---|
| The Crusher | Gets faster every time you wound it — a race against its own acceleration. | 3 |
| The Ghost King | Teleports across the maze on a timer, with a brief warning flash. | 1 |
| The Phantom | Phases in and out; you can only strike it while it's solid. | 1 |
| Overclock | Splits off a clone after its first wound, and moves fast. | 2 |
| Null Circuit | Invisible unless you're in power mode or right on top of it. | 1 |
| Data Specter | Trails, drops a decoy, and flickers invulnerable in its final phase. | 6 |
| Quantum Ghost | Reverses your orbs and inverts gravity, warning before each shift. | 8 |
| The Cipher | Cycles through four boss forms mid-fight, each with its own rules. | 10 |
The lighter bosses fall to a single clean power-mode hit, so the challenge is positioning. The heavy late-game trio — Data Specter, Quantum Ghost, and The Cipher — make you rebuild power mode from fresh orbs again and again while dodging their pattern shifts, which is why I gave them far larger health bars.
Boss Rush
For the fights without mazes in between, Boss Rush is a dedicated gauntlet: four bosses back to back — Overclock, Null Circuit, Data Specter, Quantum Ghost — on a clock, with the corner power orbs replenished between each so you always have ammunition. Clearing all four is its own achievement and cosmetic reward, and the purest test of the power-mode-to-hit loop.
Worlds, gimmicks, and progression
Stages are grouped into worlds of seven, each named: Neon City, Phantom Zone, Data Void, Null Space, Circuit Hell, Ghost Realm, and Infinite Loop. Every world you climb raises enemy speed by about 8% and your score payout by about 15% — deeper is riskier but worth more. From World 2 on, each world also layers on a gimmick that rewrites one rule: Speed Surge (enemies ramp harder), Power Drought (fewer power orbs), One-Way (strict gate lockouts), Iron Will (only Mega Power can frighten), Splitter World (double Splitters), and Phantom Shift (enemies mutate mid-stage). A banner announces it when you enter, so you're never blindsided.
Everything feeds a token economy and a codex that fills in as you meet each enemy, pickup, and hazard. Beyond the standard run there are Daily Challenges, a rotating Tournament, and Challenge Runs — Powerless, Speed Demon, Darkness — that trade brutal modifiers for big multipliers.
The Circuit Pass
Wrapping the whole game is the Circuit Pass — a seasonal reward track with 30 tiers across a free lane and a premium lane. You earn Circuit Points just by playing, and every 200 points bumps you a tier. The free lane pays out escalating token bundles climbing from 20 to a 300-token capstone; the premium lane mixes in bigger token drops and exclusive skins at milestone tiers — Neon Gold, Phantom Violet, Circuit Red, Void Black, Storm White, and Inferno Red. It's the long-tail goal that gives your best runs somewhere to accumulate.
Tips from the developer
- Live on the tunnel. Row 11's wrap is your reset button — dive through a forming pincer and the hunters have to re-path from scratch.
- Save a power orb. The last orb of a stage is worth more as a panic button or a Mega Power overlap than as an opener.
- Bait bosses toward orbs. You can only hurt a boss in power mode, so lead it to your ammunition, not the reverse.
- Respect the Sleeper and the Anchor. The Sleeper wakes at 2,000 points, and the Anchor pins the last orbs you need — plan a stage's ending around both.
- Read the gimmick banner. Under Iron Will especially, forgetting that only Mega Power frightens enemies is how good runs end.
That's the whole circuit: a classic chase spine with ten distinct minds hunting you, a deck of pickups that bend each stage, eight bosses that flip the rules, and a season pass over the top. Learn the scatter rhythm, hoard your power orbs, and every board becomes a puzzle you solve rather than a panic you survive.