We're in the last two days of The Maze of Games campaign, and we expect some of you are coming back for the first time. Here's what you missed!

• We converted most everything to add-ons. Basically, you start by choosing one book type: ebook ($20), hardcover ($50), signed hardcover ($65), or signed Gatekeeper's Limited Edition ($175). Select one of those, and then if you want more items, use this pledge calculator to figure out your pledge.
• Even if you missed the first go-around on Gatekeeper's Limited Editions, you can upgrade now to one of our second printings! We have about 65 left out of our total of 250. Just choose the $175 level and you can get one of those. As of today, if you have ordered a Gatekeeper's Limited Edition, you can order a second such book for $175 if and only if you send us an inbox note that you have done so.
• Our add-on list includes the following: a gorgeous maze map for $10, award-winning composer Austin Wintory's digital soundtrack for $15, a set of a dozen code pencils for $30, three Pete Venters art prints (+$55 for the 1st, +$30 for the 2nd, +$20 for the 3rd), a thank-you video (+$50), and a puzzle seminar from Mike and Thomas Snyder (+$100). Note that all copies of the Gatekeeper's Limited Editions already contain maps.
• You can add additional books for $15 for an add-on ebook, $50 for an add-on hardcover, or $65 for an add-on signed hardcover.
• There are still a couple cryptexes left, one cameo, and a few larger rewards.
• All backers of any book will get a PDF of the book. All backers of any hardcover will get a mazefinder bookmark. Everyone gets Gatekeeper wallpaper.
• The Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has created an enchanting Gatekeeper scent which you can order in the late summer, if you have reserved a book with us by the end of this campaign.
• The Conundrucopia has gotten very big. So far we've freed Mike, Gaby, Thomas Snyder, Patrick Berry, Ken Jennings, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Eric Harshbarger, Dan Katz, Sean Trowbridge, Jeffrey Harris, Trip Payne, Wil Zambole, Patrick Blindauer, Roy Leban, Francis Heaney, Scott Kim, Wei-Hwa Huang, Pavel Curtis, Tyler Hinman, Jeff Martin, Matt Jones, Mark Gottlieb, Deb Amlen, Eric Berlin, and Richard Garfield. We still hope that section will contain an RPG from Mike and James Wallis, plus puzzles from David Ellis Dickerson, Scott Weiss, John Chaneski Greg Pliska, Jeff Chen, Peter Gordon, and the Puzzlemaster himself, Will Shortz!
• We have released a whole lot of puzzles, and will have a summary of them tomorrow, including our final puzzle and the revelation of the Gamesmaster badge.

Ebook in progress

Here's a video of the Puzzazz ebook in progress. It is very early, only showing a little hint of the awesome TouchWrite functionality. But it's still pretty darn cool.

More tomorrow. Thanks for supporting The Maze of Games!

Mike and the Sharks

In the final 72 hours of this Kickstarter campaign, we are locking up a last group of puzzlemakers. The Conundrucopia will be expanded by 8 pages and will contain these luminaries, should we make our funding goals:

• John Chaneski and Greg Pliska, the talented puzzlemaking duo for Public Radio's "A Way with Words" and collaborators on NPR's "Ask Me Another" 
• David Ellis Dickerson, the puzzly host of the Greeting Card Emergency series
• Jeff Chen, a crossword constructor who just won one of this year's ORCA Awards
• Scott Weiss, the professor who caused the only three-way tie on Jeopardy!
• Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword editor and NPR Puzzlemaster

Yes indeed, that Will Shortz. Will plans to contribute a puzzle if we make it all the way to $170,000. Which we sincerely hope we Will.

Now you can smell like the Gatekeeper

One thing about the unexpected success we've had with The Maze of Games is that it makes amazing opportunities available to us. And when Lone Shark logistics manager Evon Fuerst suggested a Maze-related perfume from the highly respected company Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, we had to jump at the chance. BPAL is no ordinary perfume company; they've done series based on the Cthulhu Mythos, Alice in Wonderland, and Edgar Allan Poe, and limited edition scents for Neil Gaiman, Hellboy, and Fraggle Rock. They are the coolest and best smelling kid on the block. And now, they've announced this:

THE GATEKEEPER: A dry perfume, solemn and riddled with ancient, whispered secrets: brittle bones, the well-worn leather spines of forgotten books, crumbling papyrus, and the warm, strange scent of yellowed, crumbling manuscripts.

Wow, what an olfactory image! We're stunned that The Maze of Games has inspired something so awesome, and we wanted all our backers to have a chance to pick this up. This isn't going to be run on the Kickstarter site, though. When the perfume ordering goes live in August, backers of any Maze of Games book will be able to order this perfume on blackphoenixalchemylab.com. You don't have to do anything now except make sure that if you want a bottle, you have an ebook, hardcover, and/or Gatekeeper's Limited Edition reserved in your pledge. Details can be found in their Black Phoenix Gazette.

"Black Phoenix loves Lone Shark Games!" BPAL owner Elizabeth Barrial says, "Mike is a phenomenal puzzle-twister and a game designer beyond compare, and he is one hell of a good guy. We are thrilled to be a part of this amazing project!"

We're thrilled too, Beth. We hope all our backers like the Gatekeeper perfume when it comes along later this year.

How to get out of the maze

From all the updates so far, many of you have been collecting squares of a maze, and not being sure what to do with them. Here is your primer to get out of the maze. The final clue is:

24. "I am the duke's wife," she says. "I answer the cal1 2 1xplorers need help. Here is what you must do to leave…"

Assemble the 24 maze pieces like a jigsaw, such that all the walls match up and that the letters in all the pieces are oriented the same way. (That is, you can read all the letters normally without turning the pieces or your head; in the piece with the letters NOH, the H is on the bottom.)

Once the pieces are correctly assembled, you can do something such that you will be able to draw a path from one end of the maze to the other. That will spell a message using one letter per piece. Type the seven-letter written source of this message into the Puzzazz site, and you will get the Maze Breaker badge. As always, the full list of clues can be found in the @MazeofGames Twitter feed. Even if you haven't solved any of the clues, nothing stops you from starting now.

And then, we expect, you're going to want to know what to do with all your badges. More on that tomorrow.

Thanks for supporting The Maze of Games!

Mike and the Sharks

Every week, the Gatekeeper will post a challenge to our readers. Last week it was to reveal a celebrity's superheroic identity. The Gatekeeper wrote, "Come up with a real-life famous person's name and then anagram it to reveal their hypothetical superhero or supervillain's name." The Gatekeeper backer enjoyed Matt Combes turning Morgan Freeman into the Meaner Frogman, though all submissions were excellent.

This week, it's a homophonic literature challenge. The Gatekeeper challenges you to: 

"Write a description of a novel with one of the title's words turned into a homophone."

So you might write the description "Two British children get trapped a hobby shop constructed entirely of corn: THE MAIZE OF GAMES." Include the name of the new book in your entry. You can also tweet your answers to the @MazeofGames Twitter feed. We'll announce the Gatekeeper's favorite on Wednesday. 

Maze of Games Kickstarter Update Puzzle #23

Your journey is near its end! Here is the penultimate part of your adventure through the maze.

23. In a hedge you see a housecat. So that's what would s4 3atz rodents away! Wait, is she changing into a woman?

When you have the game name that answers the puzzle, go to puzzazz.com/mazeofgames. Type in the puzzle's number and your answer, in that order. If you're correct, you'll get a piece of a maze which you can assemble to help you find your way out! You can find all previous update puzzles at the @MazeofGames Twitter feed. 

Thanks for supporting The Maze of Games!

Mike and the Sharks

Mike's at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament hobnobbing with the puzzle stars, so we asked Pete to tell us more about the art. We think you'll like what's inside his head.

I just made my stealth check to get past the army of puzzle ninjas roaming the halls of Lone Shark Games. Mike said he wanted me to come in and talk about some artwork, but I ask you, after "Comandante Selinker" locked up half the puzzlemaking community to fuel his nefarious goals, do you really think I was gonna pop in when he was expecting me?

So, a little background: While I’ve been painting for around two decades, I switched full time to working digitally some six or more years ago. The images you’ve seen so far? All digital.

I’m sure some of you are surprised to discover that. Many people still associate digital art with a smooth, artificial perfection but the tools we have to hand these days allow us to get our hands as dirty - metaphorically speaking - as any traditional artist. It just takes a little bit of effort.

In The Maze of Games, the artwork is being drawn with a very scratchy line made from a nice little Photoshop brush that mimics pencil on paper. This is then consolidated with layers of shading using some digital brushes that generate blotchy or dirty marks. Every process ensures the image is very textured to aid the sense of having discovered a book whose pages are a little aged and weathered by time. But even after all of that, I like to throw in an extra custom-built layer or three to increase the earthy textural quality and seal the deal on the weathered look.

But you’ve seen that pic before! Sure, but I thought it might be nice to see an image you’re now so familiar with have its layers peeled back. It may seem like a lot of effort, but I think it’s worth it and hopefully you do too. Okay, some of you may be asking “If you’re so in love with all this dirt and texture, why don’t you just do it out of pencil and charcoal?” to which I retort, “You ever tried getting charcoal dust out of a scanner, buddy?”

But, I wouldn’t want to leave you without something new, so here’s the one piece that doesn’t use any weathering (call me contrary) as it’s not intended as one of the images from the core narrative….

Yup, there’s the cage with my name on it. As I thought. Well, gotta go, but I’ll be back next week with a few more images to whet your appetite for the book as The Maze of Games rolls into the final few days of its Kickstarter campaign!

Maze of Games Kickstarter Update Puzzle #22

Your journey continues! Here is the antepenultimate part of your adventure through the maze.

22. This is a fierce animal-human hy4! 2tting away will be hard. But wait, is he running away? What frightened him?

When you have the game name that answers the puzzle, go to puzzazz.com/mazeofgames. Type in the puzzle's number and your answer, in that order. If you're correct, you'll get a piece of a maze which you can assemble to help you find your way out! You can find all previous update puzzles at the @MazeofGames Twitter feed.

Thanks for supporting The Maze of Games!

Mike and the Sharks

When your books arrive, we sincerely hope you will enjoy reading and solving The Maze of Games in the quiet of your home. We expect that some of you might want it to be a little less quiet. So we present this amazing announcement.

Some of you are freaking out right now. We expect the rest of you don't know who Austin Wintory is, so allow us to educate you. Austin is the first composer ever to be nominated for a Grammy for his work on a videogame. Just yesterday, he won two British Academy Awards for his score for the videogame Journey, which must be heard to be believed. He's composed music for nearly 40 films, as well as the videogames Monaco, Kinect Party, and The Banner Saga, among others.

We're huge fans of Austin's here at Lone Shark, and working with him on this project should be a real treat. Austin had this to say: "When I first discovered The Maze of Games on Kickstarter, entirely by accident, I was immediately struck that it was something I had to be a part of. I am sort of obsessed with working in media outside my normal area of games, films, and concert music, and so writing an album inspired by such an unconventional book seemed like pure bliss. I can't overstate how excited I was when Lone Shark showed a mutual interest!"

We did indeed! So, for an add-on of $15 over the price of any book, the music will be available as a digital download. Your Maze of Games experience will be heightened by playing this soundtrack as you wind through the mazes. Reserve yours today.

A musical interlude

In honor of the above announcement, we decided to play a little music ourselves. Puzzle ninja Gaby Wiedling has recorded a brief audiofile for you, which you'll find at the bottom of this update. This file is a word or phrase translated into the musical alphabet, which as you know is quite a bit more limited than our standard alphabet. So you'll have to extrapolate from there. The musical clip is in 9/8 time signature, and is a complete measure. Answering this puzzle will get you the Bandleader badge.

Also, we're off to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament! Mike and many of The Conundrucopia authors will be at this tournament in Brooklyn from Friday to Sunday. We'll have a booth at the Saturday Puzzle Market there. If you're in the Big Apple this weekend, come by and say hi. We'll also have a big announcement from the tournament for which we hope you'll stay tuned.

Maze of Games Kickstarter Update Puzzle #21

Your journey continues! Here is the next part of your adventure through the maze.

21. He holds an enchanted sack of chestbones! "Hands off!" he shouts. "Don't touch my magi1 3 3 1lse I eat you!"

When you have the game name that answers the puzzle, go to puzzazz.com/mazeofgames. Type in the puzzle's number and your answer, in that order. If you're correct, you'll get a piece of a maze which you can assemble to help you find your way out! You can find all previous update puzzles at the @MazeofGames Twitter feed.

Thanks for supporting The Maze of Games!

Mike and the Sharks