Museum Heist

What is Museum Heist?

Museum Heist is a turn-based stealth puzzle. A thief figurine creeps across a museum at night, seen from above, past guards who walk the same rounds over and over and cameras that sweep the rooms. Nothing in the museum is random once the level starts: every guard follows a fixed patrol loop, and every camera turns in a fixed cycle. That makes each level a puzzle of timing and routes rather than of luck.

Every level is original. A generator builds a museum with rooms, doorways, display cases and patrols, and a solver then searches every combination of where the thief stands, where the guards and cameras are in their cycles, which gems are taken and how many coins are left. It keeps only levels where the watchers really change the route, and the fewest turns it finds is shown as the par. Easy levels have one gem, one coin and one or two guards on a 7 by 7 floor; medium levels two gems, two coins and two or three guards, sometimes a camera, on 8 by 9; hard levels three gems, two coins, three or four guards and one or two cameras on 9 by 11. There are 40 levels in each, and a Daily level, the same for everyone, comes from a bank of 100 of its own.

How to play

Take every gem, then step onto the exit.

• Step by tapping a tile next to the thief, or by swiping. One swipe is one step, so the thief never runs on by accident.
• Wait by tapping the thief, or with the Wait button. The thief stays put and the world moves on.
• After every turn each guard takes one step along its patrol or turns on the spot, as its round says, and each camera turns to its next facing.
• Lamp beams reach up to three tiles straight ahead and stop at walls, display cases and pillars. If the thief ends a turn inside a beam, or on a guard's tile, the thief is caught.
• Plan ahead. Faint footprints show where each guard will be after your next turn, and red dashed squares mark every tile that will be watched then. A tile without red dashes is safe to end your next turn on.
• Coins. Press Coin, then tap one of the gold rings up to three tiles away. Throwing takes no turn. Every guard within three tiles of the coin looks toward it while the world moves on your next turn, so its beam points away for that one turn. You get one coin on easy levels and two on the others.
• Undo is free and takes back your last turn or coin, even a turn that got you caught. Restart puts everything back where the level began and costs points.
• Hint shows the next move of a shortest way out from where you stand, at a cost of 300 points.
• Score. 500 points per gem, plus 2,000 for escaping in the par, minus 100 for each turn beyond it, 200 for each restart and 300 for each hint (that part never drops below 200). Higher is better.

Strategy tips

1. Read the red dashes, not the beams. The beams show where the guards look now; what catches you is where they look after the world moves, and that is what the red dashes show.
2. Walk behind the guards. A guard only sees ahead. The tile right behind a guard, or beside it, is usually the safest place in the room.
3. Count the loop. Every patrol repeats. Watch a guard for one full round, find the turn when its beam points away from the doorway you need, and arrive on that turn.
4. Waiting is a move. Many levels are won by standing still for a turn or two in a safe corner until a beam swings past.
5. Save your coins for doorways. A coin buys exactly one turn of a guard looking elsewhere. It is worth most where a guard watches a narrow passage you have to cross.
6. Think about the order of the gems. On harder levels the shortest route often takes the gems in an order you would not expect, because the guards are in a better place by the time you reach the last one.

FAQ

Is Museum Heist free to play?

Yes. Like every game on Play, it runs free in your browser, with no download and no account needed.

Can every level be solved?

Yes. A solver searched every level before it shipped and found the fewest turns to escape with every gem, and a test in the game's code solves all of them again.

Why was I caught on a tile that looked dark?

Because the check happens after the world moves. The thief steps, then the guards step and the cameras turn, and only then is the thief checked. The red dashed squares show exactly which tiles are watched at that moment.

What does a coin do, exactly?

It lands on the tile you pick, up to three tiles from the thief, without using a turn. On your next turn every guard within three tiles of the coin still walks its step but looks toward the coin, so its beam points that way. Cameras do not hear it.

What is the Daily level?

Every day everyone gets the same level, from a bank of 100 with two gems each, so scores compare directly on the daily leaderboard.