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Welcome to Lexy's Labyrinth, an open source puzzle game that emulates beloved classic Chip's Challenge®¹ and its long-delayed sequel, Chip's Challenge® 2. It's been lovingly crafted from scratch with completely new art, sounds, and music; it lets you undo your mistakes; and it's the only way to play Chip's Challenge 2 levels on Linux, Mac, or a phone!
This is a classic game about pushing blocks, dodging monsters, and finding your way to the exit. It's like Sokoban in real time.
A good place to dive in is one of these two packs:
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Lexy's Lessons is a custom-made set for Lexy's Labyrinth that gives you a whirlwind tour of every mechanic in Chip's Challenge 2. It's a little dense, but forgiving and relatively short, and it should teach you everything you need to play any other Chip's Challenge levels.
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Level Pack 1 is a community-made level pack intended for new players. It was made for Chip's Challenge 1, which means it uses a much smaller set of mechanics, so there's less stuff to remember. On the other hand, it's much longer, at just shy of 150 levels.
Lexy's Labyrinth has done a bit of rebranding, so the hints embedded in levels may refer to some unfamiliar names:
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"Chip" is the main character, now Lexy the fox -
"Melinda" is the secondary main character, now Cerise the gelbeast -
"chips", the main thing you collect, are now hearts -
the "chip socket" is the barrier before the exit, now a heart gate
The other differences are fairly minor.
Chip's Challenge has a rocky history. The original game was made for the ill-fated Atari Lynx handheld, largely forgotten by history. It was better known by its Microsoft Windows port, which is nostalgic for a great number of us who grew up with it — but that port didn't really do the game justice.
A sequel, Chip's Challenge 2, was made in the early 2000's, but ownership issues prevented its release until 2015, and it can be difficult to get running (especially if you're not on Windows).
A huge backlog of user-created levels for Chip's Challenge 1 exist, but they can't be loaded by the modern Steam version of Chip's Challenge 1, leaving them in an awkward limbo. And it seems unlikely there will ever be another installment.
Lexy's Labyrinth is a fan-made attempt to make the series more accessible by bridging some of these gaps.
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By default, it behaves similarly to Chip's Challenge 2, but with some bugs fixed and some compromises made to keep Chip's Challenge 1 levels playable. You shouldn't have to care what a "ruleset" is just to play some levels. But if it does become necessary, Lexy's Labyrinth can also emulate the Steam rules or the original Lynx rules pretty faithfully.
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It has the best of the community levels built in, right in a web browser, anywhere, on any platform. But if you want to load the original levels, or any others for that matter, you can do that too.
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You can rewind/undo, so no need to worry about fat-fingering ten minutes into an excruciatingly long level. And if execution is still a problem, try step mode, where the world doesn't move until you do.
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The built-in tileset includes shapes and symbols, so you don't need perfect color vision to tell a green key from a yellow one.
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It has a completely original soundtrack that is pretty dang good.
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It comes with a level editor, so you can try designing your own levels, playtest them with a click, and share them with nothing more than a link. All local — no accounts, nothing to sign up for.
If I may be so bold — it's the ZDoom of Chip's Challenge.
I hope you enjoy! See Features for more.
Move with the arrow keys or WASD.
For Chip's Challenge 2 levels, you get a couple extra actions: Q to drop your oldest (leftmost) item, E to cycle your inventory to the left, and C to switch between player characters in levels that have more than one.
P pauses the game. Space resumes a paused game, starts a level without moving you, or advances the world in step mode.
Press U to instantly undo the state of the game, back to just before the last move you made. This also works while paused, if timing is of the essence.
Hold Z to rewind in real time. You can currently only rewind the last 30 seconds, but hopefully this limit will be raised or eliminated in the future.
Hold R for a short time to restart the level.
Semi-secret controls: , . advance time forwards or backwards by the smallest possible increment in step mode, or while watching a replay.
All of the keyboard controls are based on the position of the key, not the letter that gets typed. So if you're on Dvorak, you're moving with ,AOE. This means, e.g., the pause key may not be P on your keyboard.
The default controls are swipe-based — slide your finger to indicate a direction, and you'll move in that direction until you either let go or move your finger again. (Diagonal swipes perform block slapping.)
A tap-based control scheme is also available in the options — here, you simply tap and hold somewhere to move towards your finger.
Other functionality is available via dedicated buttons.
Most controllers should work out of the box. Move with the d-pad or either stick. The face buttons perform the extra actions:
- Ⓐ (east button) — idle
- Ⓑ (south button) — drop oldest item
- Ⓨ (west button) — cycle inventory
- Ⓧ (north button) — switch players
Controller support is still new and experimental. Notably, it only works within the game, so it's not possible to pause/undo/etc. with only a controller.
Scoring is the same as in the original games. Completing a level is worth 500 points, times the level's number (so beating level 7 is worth 3500 points). Any extra time left on the clock adds 10 points per whole second; untimed levels don't get a time bonus. Bonus candy is simply worth that number of points.
You can see your scores and your total score for the pack in the "level select" dialog. Your best time remaining on the clock, best real time, and best score are tracked separately for each level. (These will generally all be from the same playthrough, but some Chip's Challenge 2 mechanics can cause them to diverge — for example, if you take a long detour to get a huge pile of bonus candy, you'll have a better score but a worse real time.)
Additionally, if you complete a level without using any of the assistive features — undo, rewind, or step mode — a single time, you get a star ★. Once you have a star on a level, you keep it forever, and the main screen shows how many stars you have per pack. But also, stars don't mean anything, so feel free to ignore them entirely.
Because Lexy's Labyrinth tries to compromise between several versions of the game, it's possible that a small handful of levels won't function correctly under the default rules. Sorry! See Known Broken Levels for known issues with the official levels and CCLPs.
The Microsoft port was incredibly buggy in ways that are very difficult to replicate and mostly make the game more confusing, so while there is a Microsoft emulation mode, it's unlikely to ever be completely accurate. It mostly focuses on overt functional differences, like monsters running into fire.
The emulation is still just shy of perfect, and as such, the community does not currently consider Lexy's Labyrinth to be scoreboard legal for speedrunning purposes.
Chip's Challenge 2 is a complex game, and weird things may happen that are nonetheless correct behavior. The default rules fix bugs, but don't alter genuine mechanics.
If you want to play — you might want to know How To Play, read about Loading Levels, or peruse the full list of Tiles.
If you want to design levels — you should get to know the Editor.
If you're a speedrunner or advanced player — still not scoreboard legal, but check out the Compatibility options or Extensions.
If you want to support the original games (or, at least, play the original levels), Chip's Challenge 1 is free on Steam, and Chip's Challenge 2 is $5 last time I checked. Lexy's Labyrinth can load and play the levels from the commercial releases, if you prefer playing them that way.
The original games are published by Niffler, and also have a spiritual sequel Chuck's Challenge 3D, named for the original designer, Chuck Sommerville. (Lexy's Labyrinth does not emulate CC3D, but it does have experimental support for some tiles similar to ones in that game.)
Lexy's Labyrinth is an independent project with absolutely no connection to any of these rightsholders.
- The original original Chip's Challenge on Steam
- Chip's Challenge 1 on Steam
- Chip's Challenge 2 on Steam
- The Bit Buster's Club fansite, whose extensive wiki and Discord have been absolutely indispensable
Have you tried clicking the icon in the bottom left?
¹ Chip's Challenge is a registered trademark of Bridgestone Media Group LLC, and is used here for purposes of identification only. Not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Bridgestone Media Group LLC.