Evil Nun Maze is a horror game developed by Keplerians, serving as an interquel between Evil Nun 1 and Evil Nun 2. This game has you escaping a twisted school patrolled by Sister Madeline, with randomized levels on each floor. What secrets lie within the school’s halls, and what drove Sister Madeline to madness?
Evil Nun Maze can be classified as a “Rogue-lite” game where you try to get as far as you can through the maze before Sister Madeline becomes too hard to avoid, collecting coins along the way. There are no puzzles to deal with on each floor, so it becomes a matter of speed and some luck with regard to level generation.
Once she catches you or you have had enough for the day, you use your collected coins to upgrade your skills, and tackle the mazes once more until you reach your limits. This continues until you get to the end of the maze, though by then the Nun becomes particularly quick.
Since it uses randomized levels, our Evil Nun Maze guide will cover what you can expect within the first 25 levels, as well as which upgrades you should prioritize between runs. There is also a practice mode in case things get too difficult, but we decided to jump straight in to regular play. Stay with us to know what Sister Madeline has up her sleeves.
1. The Secrets In The School
In each level of Evil Nun Maze, the main goal is to go from one elevator to the other, with their respective rooms colored red and blue. Unlike Evil Nun 2, Sister Madeline is the only real threat. That being said, you do not have to worry about any mutant chickens lurking about.
The rooms connecting the elevators will be randomized so not only will each floor layout be different each playthrough, but how the rooms connect with each other will not make any sort of sense; expect a chemistry lab to lead to a dead end or a long line of restrooms, or classrooms essentially chained together on the way to the exit.
This also means that a playthrough can potentially end because of a bad layout, such as a very cramped floor with little room to maneuver. There are two available modes for starting a game;
- Normal Mode: As the name implies, this is Evil Nun Maze’s default mode, with Sister Madeline skulking the school ready to end your run;
- Practice Mode: Where Sister Madeline’s AI is disabled, and she essentially wanders the floor ignoring your presence. There is one penalty to this mode which we will discuss later in the guide.
At first, you only need to press one button to open the exit elevator. However, for every five floors you have to press one more button before the exit elevator opens, up to a maximum of 20 buttons from the hundredth floor onwards. This can get incredibly overwhelming the further you go. As with the rooms, the locations of these buttons will change each playthrough. The buttons come in four colors—red, yellow, green, and blue—and must be pressed in order.
Occasionally, you might find a sequence of buttons with the same color and, in that case, any button of that color will suffice. These buttons will take some time to activate, so pressing a button while Sister Madeline is chasing you may not be a good idea when you are starting out. Thankfully, progress in activating a button is indicated by a ring of lights around the button in question, so you can stop activation midway for whatever reason and continue activating it once the coast is clear.
A tune should play once all the buttons have been pressed, indicating that the exit is now open. If you try to activate a button that is not in sequence, the ring will constantly loop around until you move away from the button.
Sister Madeline does not spawn immediately when a level starts. Instead, the game gives you a head start before she starts patrolling the floor, hears your footsteps, and homes on your location. Where she spawns seems just as randomized as the floors in the school, but in our playthroughs she seems to prefer entering rooms close to the exit elevator, if not the exit itself.
If she sees you, she announces it either with “There you are!” or “You cannot run away, child!” and the music becomes more frantic, with Sister Madeline going from a simple walk to a full run. As you navigate the floors, you may occasionally knock off paintings hanging from the walls, but Sister Madeline does not appear to be drawn to the commotion.
She moves fairly slowly at first courtesy of her heavy mallet, but as you progress through the game, her movement becomes faster. As ridiculous as the animation can look, this means that Sister Madeline can close the gap very quickly at later levels. You can try to hear her footsteps and occasional dialogue, but it is hard to do without headphones or maximizing the volume of your device. If she does catch you, she will kill you, and the game will give you the option of watching an ad to continue your run, warping you back to the starting elevator and resetting Sister Madeline’s spawn timer.
If you are caught a second time however, it is game over for that run. She will eventually give up the chase if you stay away from her line of sight for about five seconds, with the music dying down to ambience as she calms down. Be warned, as she can immediately go back up to full speed if she sees you after giving up her previous chase.
The game offers you checkpoints every fifth floor, so you can start a new playthrough right at the first floor, select the checkpoint closest to your personal best, or watch an ad to start at your best floor right away. Note that reaching the exit once it is open counts as a victory, even if Sister Madeline is practically within striking distance. She will glare at you from the other side of the elevator, but will have to try again on the next floor. This is not always reliable and she might be closer than you think.
Though the developers advertise Evil Nun Maze as a horror game like their previous works, in practice, later floors become a hectic game of cat-and-mouse, with you collecting coins and pressing buttons while Sister Madeline skulks the labyrinth, and running for dear life when the music changes. Over time, stealth becomes less important and speed becomes a necessity, as the number of buttons involved and the speed of Sister Madeline both go up quite a bit. Trying to remain hidden when you have twelve buttons to press while Sister Madeline is zipping around the floor is a challenge in itself.
2. Purchasing Power-Ups
Aside from avoiding Sister Madeline as you open the exit, you can collect coins scattered about on every floor, keeping them when you reach the exit. At first, you only get one coin per collection. As you progress through the floors, you will encounter bags that hold multiple coins, as much as 10 coins per bag.
You also receive a one-time coin reward for beating a floor for the first time, though to compensate for Sister Madeline’s disabled AI, the coin reward from Practice Mode runs is significantly smaller. Every time you exit a floor, the game gives you the option of watching an ad to double all your earned coins, including those coins from one-time bundles.
Your earned coins are used to upgrade “Power-Ups” which in practice, are more like upgrades that improve your in-game performance, especially in later floors. There are five upgrades in total;
Speedy Shoes: A straightforward upgrade, this increases your movement speed which is vital in later floors. It can make it difficult to steer when running at full sprint though;
Elevator Operator Gloves: This upgrade decreases the time needed to activate any of the elevator buttons on a given floor. With enough ranks, you will be activating those buttons in a flash;
Super Magnet: Choosing this upgrade gives you a radius that pulls in nearby coins, making it easier to just brush past coins in order to pick them up. Spending more coins increases the pull radius;
Ethereal Pendant: This upgrade reduces the noise you make as you move, making Sister Madeline less likely to hear your footsteps and locate your position;
Nun Repellent: Increases the time before Sister Madeline spawns in, giving you a little more freedom when starting a floor.
The coin costs of these upgrades naturally go up with each purchase, meaning that progress in Normal mode will help out a lot, the ad multiplier more so. With enough upgrades purchased, you can expect regular endurance runs to collect as much coins as you can.
However, there are some upgrades worth focusing on than others. Coupled with the one-time rewards becoming harder to come by, picking the right upgrades early on can make a huge difference.
3. Mastering The Mazes
With Evil Nun Maze’s basics and mechanics out of the way, we can give you pointers on how to maximize your run performance. These range from adjusting certain settings to figuring out where to spend your coins, and even knowing how certain rooms can generate.
The first thing we would recommend is adjusting the camera turning speed for Evil Nun Maze, available through the settings icon at the upper left corner of the screen. During our playthroughs, the camera would quickly jerk to a random direction from time to time, which made escaping Sister Madeline or navigating the floors more difficult than it should be.
Changing the turning speed also makes steering your character easier to do as you upgrade your movement speed, so that you do not have to course correct as often while zipping through the labyrinths. We also disabled vibration to minimize distractions, relying more on audio cues to tell us if we were spotted. This was more of a personal preference on our end.
Although the floors are randomized, the rooms do have some characteristics you can use to keep some distance away from you and Sister Madeline:
- First off, some rooms are clearly classrooms, complete with desks. If the classrooms are large enough, the desks will be arranged in a grid, creating several obstacles for both you and Sister Madeline to navigate through. This can easily buy you some time making an escape, especially at later levels when Sister Madeline’s movement speed is quite fast. On occasion, the classrooms may also house a teacher’s desk on one end of the room, creating a break in the otherwise uniform grid.
- You can find chemistry laboratories that are big enough to house several lab tables in the middle of the room. These result in grids similar to those found in the classroom, but with narrower paths to navigate through, especially between tables.
- Some rooms have lockers lining the walls, and may have rows of chairs in the middle of the room. These result in long stretches of floor with no “breaks” in between, where the only turns are at the walls. This is only exacerbated by the presence of lockers that make those paths narrower.
- In all cases, the room may just be big enough to only house one desk, table, or row of chairs, “hollowing out” the room, so to speak, and leaving the outer perimeter untouched. These are a boon in dead-end rooms, as even if Sister Madeline spots you, you can lure her to one corner and make a break towards the exit as soon as she gets close. Be wary of obstacles that may narrow those paths.
- Lastly, there are bathrooms that do not have any obstacles in the middle of the room. There may be sinks and toilets on the walls but past that, there is nothing that can slow either you or Sister Madeline down. Enter these rooms only if you have to press buttons or are trying to escape Sister Madeline.
When starting a floor, expect that the first button you may encounter will not be the first button you need to press, or even near the entrance for that matter. The random level generation might give you the first button right away, but as the number of buttons needed goes up, the chances become less likely. As such, you can expect that during the first minute, you will be trying to map out the floor while avoiding Sister Madeline.
Keep track of any landmarks on that floor as you explore, so that you know where to go in the event of being chased. It may seem easy to try and memorize where the buttons are so that you can activate them in sequence. But as we mentioned above, you can expect up to 20 buttons to press before the exit opens. At later floors, you are better off hitting the earliest button you find that is next in the sequence.
That is not to say that you should ignore the other buttons altogether. Until enough purchases for the Elevator Operator Gloves have been made, you can “prime” a button for activation by interacting with it and moving away before it completes.
This leaves the button ready for activation while you go off searching for the other buttons, and when that button comes up in the sequence, you do not have to wait long before it activates. Once you have upgraded the Elevator Operator Gloves enough times however, the activation becomes so quick that this tactic can be safely phased out, and chances are you cannot afford to stay put in later floors.
If Sister Madeline does spot you, be aware of any routes that lead to dead ends. Unless, of course, there is a dead end with obstacles inside which will give you a way to slow her down. As mentioned before, she will eventually give up the chase after losing sight of you for about five seconds, though she can resume the chase if she sees you again.
Be careful as Sister Madeline’s attack radius appears to pass through corners, allowing her to kill you at odd angles when the two of you are at a turn. Remember the changes in music when she spots you and when she loses track of you, and adjust your routes accordingly.
While it is tempting to collect all the coins in a floor before leaving it, know when to cut your losses and leave some coins behind. If you just barely escape Sister Madeline and there are a couple of bags remaining, it may be better to just focus on the exit. It’s better that you cash in your hard-earned coins now, especially if you beat the floor for the first time, rather than risk losing your earnings or spending your only revive.
When it comes to upgrades, your movement speed is essential. Upgrading your Speedy Shoes as much as you can must be your top priority. The next most important upgrade is a roughly even split between the Super Magnet and the Elevator Operator Gloves. The Super Magnet makes coin collecting much easier, and thus lessens the grind between upgrades.
The Elevator Operator Gloves become invaluable in later floors where you have lots of buttons to press before you can open the exit. The Nun Repellent does not appear to have much of an effect on Sister Madeline’s spawn delay, but it does buy yourself some time when starting a floor. This is particularly beneficial if the generated floor is small.
Lastly, the Ethereal Pendant becomes practically useless as Sister Madeline’s speed goes up every floor, because she can spot you just by wandering around the level. Unless you have the coins to spare, ignore the Ethereal Pendant as it becomes less and less effective the further you travel.
The ad-earned coins multiplier you are offered after beating a floor should be taken when clearing a floor for the first time. Coupled with the coins you find on a given floor, the multiplier’s effects can help mitigate the grind for that next upgrade. The multiplier is still useful when redoing previous floors for whatever reason. This is because while the overall payout will not be as much as the first-time bonus, the number of coins per bag goes up as you delve deeper into the school. If you are really desperate for money, you could go for Practice Mode.
Although the one-time bonuses are not much, the coins you can find in Practice Mode’s floors scale gives you a stress-free way of gathering coins while Sister Madeline aimlessly ambles about. Instead, your only real concern there is the number of buttons you have to press.
Lastly, if you have to stop your current run, because you do not have enough time to continue, the generated floor seems unfair, or you simply have had enough of Sister Madeline for the time being, you can always exit the current run.
If you want to give Evil Nun Maze one more go, you can just watch an ad to jump right back to your best floor, or you can select the closest checkpoint if you want to collect a few more coins or need a warm-up before really beating your personal best.
And that concludes our guide to Evil Nun Maze. It is a very different experience compared to Keplerians’ previous games. Evidently, it becomes a lot more frantic as your playthroughs continue, and some floors will have special surprises should you manage to reach them.
By that point however, remember that Sister Madeline moves incredibly fast and you have lots of Elevator Buttons to switch on before you can leave with any collected coins. If you guys have any secrets or tips you would like to share with us, please let us know in the comment section below! Good luck, and have fun!