When Lily, the games heroine, is in school, she fell asleep and begins
dreaming. But something goes wrong and she got trapped inside her dream in the
Land of Nod, where the Dream Reaper lives. Now she must find a way to escape
before it’s too late.

Essentially, the game based upon Pac-Man. You must collect all Dream Crystals
in a level, avoid all enemies (or destroy them if you can), and must do this
fast enough or you will be chased be the Dream Reaper himself. Once you
collect all crystals, you proceed to the next level. There are 49 levels in
the game, with four different environments, like ancient Rome or Egyptian
theme. There are also bonus levels for gaining extra lives.

The game is 3D in an isometric overview (including different altitudes, but no
“overlapping” between areas). The level itself is divided into squares, where
most squares contain either a Dream Crystal, obstacles (like pillars, water,
etc.), or are empty by design. All “lower” minions move only horizontal or
vertical along those squares, “higher” minions, including the Dream Reaper
himself, can move in all directions. Lily can also move in any direction, but
that make the crystal collecting a bit difficult if you are under time
pressure (chased by enemies).

As already said, your goal is to collect all Crystals, which are either green,
red, or blue. You get 10 points for each crystal, once you collect 25,000, you
gain a new life. But you don’t need to collect 2,500 crystals for this, since
there is more than just those crystals in the game.

There are 6 different Power Ups in the game: Cake (will give extra points,
1000 and more, depending on the level), Magic Coin (will double all Crystals
for a short time, doubling both the points you get and the size of the
crystals too), Clock (will slow all enemies down for some seconds), Speed
Boots (will increase the movement speed of Lily, by more than doubling it),
Heart (will give an extra life; mostly defended by an “higher” minion), and
Star (will make Lily invulnerable some seconds, with this, Lily can destroy
enemies; this is the only way to do this).

The Power Ups are either on a fixed point in the level (like Cake and Heart)
or move themselves from one point to another.

When Lily gets caught, she “dies”, you loose one of your few lives (you have
three at the beginning), and you restart at your starting point and can
continue collecting crystals. With “dies” I mean, it does not look like dying
(she fell to her knees, and a bit later the game continues on the starting
point). That’s because their is absolutely no violence in the game.

Once you killed an enemy, you are rewarded with 200 points, and with every
enemy more you kill, the points get doubled each time, so hurry and kill as
much enemies as you can find before the invulnerability goes away. When you
collected the Power Ups, they are gone in this level, so they won’t “refill”.
Collecting all Power Ups before you collect your last Dream Crystal will give
you extra points on the end of the level, this is also the case when you don’t
die (Survivor Bonus). Clearing the level as fast as possible will not only
prevent the appearance of the Dream Reaper, but it will also give you extra
points, but only if you clear the level in less than 2 minutes (100 bonus
points per second, up to the 2 minutes).

Crystal Maze