How to play Temple Expedition

Temple Expedition is an action-puzzle adventure through tiled temple mazes. Every screen is a small logic problem wearing an arcade skin.

The objective

Each stage sets a diamond quota. The stairs down stay sealed until you have collected enough.

Finding the diamonds is the puzzle. They are in chests, pots and barrels, behind gates, and across gaps that need bridging.

The pieces

Stone balls can be pushed. They bridge water and gaps, and they block hazards. A ball can only be pushed, never pulled, which means pushing one into a corner or against a wall can put it permanently out of play — and if that ball was the bridge you needed, the stage is no longer completable.

Gold and silver keys open gates of the matching colour.

Serpents, spiders and scorpions patrol fixed routes. You can strike them or slip past them.

Fire jets, spikes and rolling boulders run on timing loops.

The habit the game is built around

Watch a room before you enter it.

Every hazard here is on a loop, which means every hazard is predictable, which means almost nothing in this game is a reflex test. The fire jet that seems impossible has a gap in its cycle; the boulder has a moment when it is at the far end of its run.

Standing still for two full cycles before committing costs a few seconds and saves a heart. Players who treat it as an action game and run in take damage they never needed to.

The thing that actually loses stages

Not the enemies. Pushing a stone ball to a place it cannot come back from.

Before pushing a ball, look at where you want it to end up and work out which side you need to be standing on for each push. Because you can only push, you have to approach a ball from the opposite side to the direction you want it to travel, and getting to that side is often the real puzzle.

If a ball needs to go two directions — right, then down — you need room to get around it in between. A ball pushed hard against a wall cannot be moved along that wall at all.

Hearts

You carry three. There is no timer, so there is never a reason to take a hit for speed.

Patience is genuinely the dominant strategy here: the stages are designed around observation, and every hazard that hurts you is one you could have watched first.

Searching

Chests, pots and barrels are worth opening even when the quota is nearly met, since a surplus carries you through a later stage where the diamonds are harder to reach. Sweep a room fully before taking the stairs.