Maze Runner Game: Four Ways to Play in the Glade

21 October 2026

If you are looking for a Maze Runner game, there are four ways to get into the Glade, and only one of them is a licensed product. There was an official mobile game released alongside the 2014 film. There are plenty of fan-made mazes in free game makers and on indie sites, most of which share the name and little else. You can run a Glade one-shot for friends with paper, a pencil and any light roleplaying rules. Or you can open James Dashner’s novel itself and wake up in the Box as a Glader of your own, with a narrator that has read the book and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want to run, to solve, to play with a group, or to live inside the story.

This guide goes through all four, says who each one suits, and ends with how to try the last one tonight without paying anything.

What people want from a Maze Runner game

The book opens with a boy who remembers nothing but his name, rising in a metal lift into a clearing walled in by a maze that changes every night. People who search for a game set there usually want one of these:

• The run. Racing the corridors before the doors close at sunset, with the Grievers somewhere behind you.
• The puzzle. Mapping a maze that moves, and finding the pattern in it.
• The Glade. The rules, the jobs, the Keepers, the Gathering where the Gladers decide what to do with a newcomer who breaks the rules.
• The mystery. Why they are there, who WICKED are, and what is waiting outside the walls in The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure.

The licensed game and most fan games serve the first two. The last two need somebody who can answer a question, which is where a table of friends or a narrator comes in.

The four options side by side

The claims below about the tie-in app are as of October 2026, read from the publisher’s own announcement.

The official Maze Runner app from 2014

When the film came out, its game came with it. PikPok announced The Maze Runner on 20 September 2014 as a free game for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android, developed by Sticky Studios. The announcement describes it in one line:

“Players take on the challenge of the mysterious maze in this officially licensed action game”

It is an arcade runner. You play through levels of rising difficulty, collect items to unlock the next one, and try to beat the clock. That is a fair reading of the film’s most famous image, a boy sprinting down a stone corridor as the walls grind shut, and it is a reasonable way to spend ten minutes on a bus.

Be aware that it is a movie tie-in from more than a decade ago. Licensed mobile games of that era often leave the stores when the licence ends, so check your own app store before you plan an evening around it, and expect the film’s look rather than the book’s.

Pick it if you loved the film and want the running, with nothing to read and nothing to decide.

It is weaker for anyone who wants the Glade, the Gathering or the mystery. There is nobody to talk to, and nothing you choose changes what happens.

Fan-made mazes and games that share the name

Search any free game site for “maze runner” and you will find a long list. Some are honest homages built in creator platforms, with stone walls, a sunset timer and something chasing you. Many more are simply maze games that took a good name. One on itch.io describes itself as “a fun first person maze solving game where you have to run through the maze as fast as possible”, with your times posted in the comments. That is a perfectly good game, and it has nothing to do with Thomas or the Grievers.

Pick it if what you want is the maze itself, the left and right turns and the thrill of a dead end, and you are happy with a world that has no story.

It is weaker for readers. A fan maze rarely has Gladers to meet, rules to break or WICKED to wonder about, and quality varies from one to the next. Read a game’s page before you download anything.

Running a Glade one-shot for your friends

The oldest way to play inside a book still works, and it needs nothing you have to buy. One person runs the game and everyone else plays a Glader. You can use any rules-light roleplaying system you already own, or no system at all: describe what is happening, let players say what they do, and roll a die when an outcome is genuinely uncertain.

The book hands you a structure that is easy to run:

1. The Box. Each player wakes in the lift with no memory but a name. Ask them one thing their character is good at, which they discover as they go.
2. The first day. Let them meet the Glade: the Homestead, the Gardens, the Deadheads, the Keepers who give out jobs. Play a few older Gladers yourself.
3. The rule. Somebody wants to go into the maze. Only Runners may. Hold a Gathering and let the table argue about it.
4. The run. Draw a grid on paper and redraw part of it between sessions, so the maze really does move. Give the Runners until sundown.
5. The question. Leave something in the maze that does not fit: a word on a wall, a sound, a sign of WICKED. Let the players decide what it means.

Pick it if you have a group that likes talking in character and somebody willing to run it. A table of friends will invent Glade politics no app can.

It is weaker for solo players and for anyone short of a game master. It also asks real preparation of whoever runs it, especially to keep the book’s world consistent across sessions.

Playing inside the novel as your own Glader

The fourth way is the newest. You give a narrator the novel itself, and it reads the book before you begin: the Glade and its jobs, the Gladers and how they talk, what they know and what they hide. You are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent. Then you make your own character and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can ask Newt why the walls close, beg Minho to train you as a Runner, sneak into the Map Room at night, or stay in the Gardens and keep your head down, and the narrator keeps the Glade consistent with what the author wrote.

This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a .txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world before your first scene. Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, it works for The Maze Runner and equally for The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure or any other novel on your shelf.

The newcomer suits this kind of game better than most. A Glader arrives knowing nothing, so you learn the world exactly as your character does, and the book’s own rules give the narrator something firm to hold you to. Break the rule about the maze and the Gladers will have something to say about it.

Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the Glade itself, and you would rather be the Glader who goes over the wall tonight than read about one.

It is weaker for players who want a group or a fast action game. It is a written story, read and typed, like a patient game master who never tires. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy.

For the wider field, see solo role playing games and AI game master. If you liked this for the Glade, our Hunger Games game guide does the same for Panem, and our Fourth Wing game guide for Basgiath.

What it takes to start each one

With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. A full novel costs more to read than the welcome credits cover, and you are shown the exact price before anything is spent. The current plans are on the pricing page.

How to start a Maze Runner game tonight

If playing inside the book sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.

1. Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. Glass Citadel is a dystopian city where every word is heard, which is a fair taste of the genre. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
2. Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
3. Upload the book. Choose the volume you want to live in, as a .txt or .epub file from your own copy. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play.
4. Make your Glader. A cook who notices everything from the Homestead window, a builder who measures the walls, a girl who arrives a month early and cannot explain why. You are a new person in the Glade, so you can be anyone.
5. Type what you do. “I ask the Keeper of the Runners what is out there.” “I wait by the doors until the last Runner comes back.” The narrator answers in the book’s world and remembers what you did, including the rules you broke.

When another Maze Runner game is the better choice

Be honest about the evening you want. If you want to run and react, a runner game on your phone gives you that in seconds, and the tie-in app was built for exactly that feeling. If you want a maze to solve, a fan-made one does the job with nothing to learn. If you have friends who like to play characters, a Glade one-shot at the table is the most social version of the book there is.

A written game fits a different moment: you have just finished the last chapter, and you want to wake in the Box yourself, with the walls ahead and nobody willing to tell you why. That is the moment it was built for. If you are looking for something to share with a group of readers instead, our games for book club ideas work for the Glade too.