CROWN OF THE SUN — A temple rebuilt for every expedition

What is CROWN OF THE SUN — A temple rebuilt for every expedition

Crown of the Sun is a top-down real-time expedition through twelve temple chambers no level designer ever drew. Each one is assembled the moment you walk in: 8 to 14 rectangular rooms scattered across the grid, joined centre to centre by L-shaped corridors, then stocked with Sunstones, coins, keys, gates, hazards and guardians. Chamber I is 36 by 26 tiles, Chamber XII is 69 by 48 — three and a half times the ground to cover.

The rules are short and the consequence is real. Gather every Sunstone — 3 in the early chambers, 6 from Chamber IX on — and the sealed gate opens. Every stone flame you light is one rise: fall in battle and you get up at that flame; when none is left the expedition ends and the score is filed. You start each chamber with one rise and can carry three. Twelve chambers in, the Sun Colossus waits with 620 vitality and a charge crossing 9 tiles a second.

How to play

1. Move with WASD or the arrows, swing with Space or J. On a phone the left half of the screen is a floating stick and the right half attacks.
2. Collect every Sunstone ✦, then step into the gate. The gold arrow circling you points at the nearest stone, and turns green for the gate once you have them all.
3. The minimap draws only what you have seen — you uncover 9 tiles around you as you walk. Keys, levers and stone plates open the gates between rooms.
4. Light every flame you pass; each is one more rise, up to three. Between chambers the relic trader sells the Obsidian Edge for 160 coins, lifting your damage from 25 to 33.

Strategies that work

• The clock is the only thing that pays: a chamber gives 300 plus 240 minus twice the seconds spent — 21 seconds paid 498, and past two minutes it is a flat 300. Kills score nothing, so walk around a mummy rather than spend three seconds on its 60 vitality.
• You uncover 9 tiles around you and the minimap shows nothing else. The compass hides once its target is within 3 tiles, so if the gold arrow vanishes the Sunstone is in the room you are already in. Every corridor links two room centres, so follow a wall.
• A pressure gate is a stone and a plate on the same row, the stone 3 tiles right of the plate — push it left and the gate latches open for good. Standing on the plate holds it only while you stand there, and an unrecoverable stone is put back after a second and a half.
• A cracked tile shakes half a second before it drops open, and stays a hole for nearly three. They run up to four along one corridor, so the mistake is stopping on the second. A fall costs 12 vitality and sends you back to the last flame you lit.
• Statues never move: an orb every 1.9 seconds at anything within 7.5 tiles they can see, for 14 — break the line of sight rather than chew through 80 vitality. Dart heads sit only on corridor tiles walled on one side, and fire away from that wall.

A little history

Crown of the Sun was written for puzzle-me.com, and its ancestry is the random dungeon: scatter rooms that do not overlap, join their centres with corridors, hand it all to a seeded generator so the same number rebuilds the same temple. The hard part was never the map, it was the locks. Add keyed doors, one-way levers and stones that must be pushed onto plates, and a generator will happily wall a Sunstone behind a door whose key lies on the far side. So the game plays each chamber before you ever do.

Frequently asked questions